L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat

A train arrives at a station. And changes everything.

There isn't a lot to really say about L'arrivée d'un train a La Ciotat as a film itself. It's under a minute and shows a train pull up at a busy station. But what it signifies is another thing altogether. When we see that train come closer and closer until it stops in the station, on a surface level we watch a train arrive but it actuality what we are really witnessing is cinema arrive. This short film may not be the earliest movie but it is the first iconic image of the moving picture age.

Auguste and Louis Lumière weren't really artists. Their early films don't stand up to the highly imaginative work of George Méliès for example. But they still remain enormously important cinema giants. Not for the content of their films but for the fact that they kicked things off in the first place and produced the first iconic moment in cinema history. And for this reason L'arrivée d'un train a La Ciotat will always be remembered. Everyone who has a love of cinema should really take a minute of their time to pay homage to the first moment in an amazing journey.