Arrivée d'un train à Perrache

Arrivée d'un train à Perrache (1896)

If you watch enough movies from 1895-1900 then you'll notice that a lot of them deal with trains. Trains pulling into a station. Cameras set up on trains to see them moving. Sometimes a camera on the track with a train coming towards it. These types of films were quite popular and this one here from the Lumiere Brothers is something that I'm sure people in 1896 loved. The camera is actually far from the tracks and we see people waiting and then the train finally pulls up. Obviously this film didn't change cinema history but it's still fascinating to watch these type of movies just because it's a popular film from the era. I'm really not sure why they were popular but there's certainly a lot of them out there.

Arrivée d'un train à Perrache (1896), is considered one of the alternate versions of the Lumiere brothers', famous, iconic film, Arrival of a Train (1895). It was actually a common practice by the Lumieres to do alternate versions of some of their work. They did it with Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) and the Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895). In this case, they shot the first train film in early 1895, then did two more attempts in 1896. You can find all three versions online these days. In essence, the Lumieres invented the cinematic practice of multiple takes, already, in the first year of motion pictures. What makes Arrivée d'un train à Perrache (1896), unique from the other versions of the train film is, this one is framed a little bit more wide, so we can see the train on the outgoing track, on the other side of the shot. The extra train frames in the shot, the people and the activity going on around them. The train on the other side of the pad, is pointed in the other direction, that flanks the scene, making the framing look nice. This is another, in a long list to come, of train films, the Lumiere company will produce, over the next 10 years. This film is considered the Lumiere's third train film attempt.

9.2 (A- MyGrade) = 9 IMDB.

Arrival of a Train in Perrache is kind of a companion piece, and reversal, to Arrival by Train in Perrache. Whereas Arrival by Train was a point of view shot from the moving train, this film, like the more famous Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, focuses on the action at the station as the train arrives. As the train pulls into the station, the people waiting at the platform scurry about. The railroad workers scramble to help passengers disembark from the train while several women walk about, looking for their arriving companions.

Although filmed at a different train station, there is little thematically to distance this film from its much more well regarded predecessor La Ciotat. Nor is this film as visually striking as its companion piece, which had the benefit of its sweeping motion. A railroad enthusiast or historian may find some value in this particular piece, but for the average viewer, it suffers from being a lesser entry in an already over-saturated market of railroad films released in 1896.

The Lumieres shot and produced "L'Arrivee d'un Train a La Ciotat", apparently for a convention of photography enthusiasts meeting there... and followed it up with this, again showing the train pulling into the station and stopping, followed by the departing passengers.

Was this some sort of variety film for the local audience, like the work that Mitchell and Kenyon would produce for Birmingham in the UK a decade later? Perhaps. Even today, when I see shots of my block in movies and on television, it gives me a peculiar, proprietary feeling.

Like "Ciotat" this is well composed, with plenty of movement, a good motion picture in every sense in the word.