L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat -Urban Legend of Film

L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (US) and The Arrival of the Mail Train) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière. It was first screened on December 28, 1895 in Paris, France, and was shown to a paying audienceJanuary 6, 1896.

This 50-second silent film shows the entry of a steam locomotive into a train station in the French coastal town of La Ciotat. Like most of the early Lumière films, L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat consists of a single, unedited view illustrating an aspect of everyday life.

The film is associated with an urban legend well-known in the world of cinema. The story goes that when the film was first shown, the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room.Hellmuth Karasek in the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote that the film "had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic." However, some have doubted the veracity of this incident such as film scholar and historian Martin Loiperdinger in his essay, "Lumiere's Arrival of the Train: Cinema's Founding Myth". Whether or not it actually happened, the film undoubtedly astonished people in the audience who were unaccustomed to the amazingly realistic illusions created by moving pictures. The Lumière brothers clearly knew that the effect would be dramatic if they placed the camera on the platform very close to the arriving train