If it is obvious that the film does not require a plethora of concepts to analyze its historical importance, this is no less obvious, indeed, that "The arrival of the train at La Ciotat", in its mundane banality, remains one of those images forever engraved in the universal photographic memory in the same way as this obscure first photograph by Niepce.
Think about it... A train arrives at the platform, passengers get off, others get on... what could be more ordinary and flat for moderne audiences and yet this arriving train has literally shattered visual conventions by offering for the first time the spectacle of reality in motion but not instantaneous, it is this little nuance on the temporal that cinema has established its glory and on the spatial that has rested all its control... so much so that spectators had the reflex to cower (thinking that the train was going to pulverize them).
The genius of the Lumière brothers was in the choice of the train as the mascot of this new artistic toy that we call cinema, a toy taken up again eight years later in a famous Western-style attack which would revolutionize the codes of narration and editing.
What a beginning and what an iconic moment: this train arriving at full steam is a new art in march...
Think about it... A train arrives at the platform, passengers get off, others get on... what could be more ordinary and flat for moderne audiences and yet this arriving train has literally shattered visual conventions by offering for the first time the spectacle of reality in motion but not instantaneous, it is this little nuance on the temporal that cinema has established its glory and on the spatial that has rested all its control... so much so that spectators had the reflex to cower (thinking that the train was going to pulverize them).
The genius of the Lumière brothers was in the choice of the train as the mascot of this new artistic toy that we call cinema, a toy taken up again eight years later in a famous Western-style attack which would revolutionize the codes of narration and editing.
What a beginning and what an iconic moment: this train arriving at full steam is a new art in march...