The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) on Netflix
NR18961mDocumentary
At the railway station in La Ciotat, people line the platform and wait as a steam locomotive hauling carriages comes toward them.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.4/1014,238 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
A train arrives at La Ciotat station.
A group of people are standing in a straight line along the platform of a railway station, waiting for a train, which is seen coming at some distance. When the train stops at the platform, the line dissolves. The doors of the railway-cars open, and people on the platform help passengers to get off.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Lumière Brothers were trying to achieve a 3D image even before their first-ever public exhibition of motion pictures, and Louis Lumière later re-shot the film with a stereoscopic camera, screening it with other 3D shorts at a 1934 meeting of the French Academy of Science.
- Contrary to popular belief, the film was not among the ten films shown at the Lumière brothers' first public screening in Paris on 28 December 1895; its first public showing took place in January 1896 in Lyon.
- The film inspired imitators such as Vitagraph Studios' The Black Diamond Express, whose exhibitors deliberately heightened audiences' fears by warning that the train "will rush towards you, belching smoke and fire from its monstrous iron throat". Vitagraph co-founder Albert E. Smith wrote that two women fainted at a showing, after which the theatre owner parked an ambulance outside for every performance.
- Three versions of the film are known to have existed, and the version most often found online is not the original but an 1897 reshoot that prominently features women and children boarding the train, according to the Lumière catalogue website.
- As early as 1901, filmmakers were parodying the idea of terrified early audiences, in comedies such as The Countryman and the Cinematograph (1901) and Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (1902). Martin Loiperdinger suggests this joke at the expense of "country rubes" may have created the widespread belief that audiences really panicked.
