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User score: 7.4
The Arrival of a Train is one of the great founding myths of film history, the hilarious tale of the dumb 19th-century rubes jumping out of the way of the train, because they couldn't tell that it wasn't a real train, because they were so dumb. This anecdote is widely disseminated even among people who have no idea who the Lumiere brothers are, and who may not be aware that it refers to a real film. Somehow, everyone has heard of it. "Jumping out of the way of the train" is practically the verbal shorthand for people not understanding new technology. And it's held that status for a long, long time: the "aaaahhh-the-train!!" legend is referenced on film as early as Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (1902), though it is not clear if Uncle Josh invented it or was itself inspired by the story.
If film was a nation, this would be its equivalent of Washington and the cherry tree, or Canada burning the White House, or Ham seeing his dad in the buff. The story is false, but it might be necessary--and when I say "necessary", keep in mind that I do not mean "desirable", but only that it is a pre-condition for shaping a society's collective unconscious. It is a story that even small children can understand, one that demonstrates in a simple example the power of a new medium, the experience of watching a film in a world that had no such concept. Tales like these are passages in the grand narrative of "progress", the kind that says everything gets better, humanity will overcome all obstacles, and anyone who says otherwise is dragging us down. Inevitably, these sorts of narratives have contributed to the development of every kind of chauvinism imaginable; nationalism, sexism, racism, classism, you name it. Technological development has an intoxicating effect on the society that experiences it; the sudden empowerment felt by shrinking and taming the world almost invariably results in collective narcissism. I'm not sure if technology is inherently cruel, or just human nature, but what I am sure of is that there are few better (or more pervasive) ways to assert one's superiority over others than by flaunting one's ability to understand and use technology. Those who cannot keep up with new developments are, themselves, outmoded. The course of history proceeds inexorably toward ever-more-powerful humans, the ubermensch eidos always being just out of grasp on the horizon, tirelessly sought by the technocrats. The technically-illiterate are, in this model, degenerates, societal offal, doomed to be trampled over in the perpetual race toward mastery over nature. Once the ideology has developed this far, it is only one step further to suggest that, maybe, the Uncle Joshes of the world should just die already. Do you want them to stop you from becoming an immortal cyborg?
Regardless of your answer to that question, there is still more to discuss about the Lumieres' film: namely, its content. The Arrival of a Train is informed by all of the aforementioned techno-fetishism of the nineteenth century, but it also exemplary in its fusion of technology and content in service of an ideological goal. It is the most striking use of the third dimension in film to date. Sure, other films had given limited impressions of depth, but no film up to now has featured the dramatic foreshortening so prominently displayed here. It is an ideal proof-of-concept for the medium. It is a triumph built upon a triumph, an ejaculation of futurism: the locomotive, that mighty symbol of nineteenth-century technology, itself recorded by even more cutting-edge tech. Although humans are visible, they are clearly subordinate to the unstoppable course of the mighty train, which dominates the film not just metaphorically, but physically, in that it literally takes up a huge portion of the screen, its size exaggerated through perspective, so that the humans beside it become insignificant insects in comparison. The Arrival of a Train marks a new era, in which machinery towers over man, guides him, controls him, caresses him. This is not a world in which the unaugmented meat-puppets will survive; no, the key to thriving in this epoch is to embrace the intercourse of steam and steel, the orgasmic stimulation of mind and body by the world's technological wunderkinds. Meld with the machine, it says, let it become you, engulf you. Such is the call--or dare I say, the mating song--of industrial machinery. In a techno-utopian world, you're ether a JG Ballard, or an Uncle Josh. Your pick.
Other connections: Not satisfied with the mere looming effect of the original 1896 train footage, Louis Lumiere remade and re-exhibited the film in 1935 with a stereoscopic 3D camera
Other most-voted titles of 1896:
2. The Kiss (William Heise | 2,151 votes)
3. The House of the Devil (Georges Melies | 1,643 votes)
4. Démolition d'un mur (Louis Lumiere | 1,620 votes)
5. The Messers. Lumière at Cards (Louis Lumiere | 968 votes)
6. The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of Robert Houdin (Georges Melies | 937 votes)
7. A Nightmare (Georges Melies | 749 votes)
8. Feeding the Doves (James H. White | 635 votes)
9. Childish Quarrel (Louis Lumiere | 631 votes)
10. A Terrible Night (Georges Melies, 630 votes)
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