Départ de Jérusalem en chemin de fer

Départ de Jérusalem en chemin de fer (1897)

Mixing travel with a train, something that would have been quite popular to people willing to pay and watch this film back in the day. The camera is set on board a train and we see the footage of the station as the train is pulling away. That's pretty much the only thing that happens here but the Lummiere Brothers were making all sorts of movies where their crews traveled the world to shoot footage. Trains were also quite popular in the day so the company decided to combine the two. There's some pretty good footage here that's at least well-shot as we get to see what people were doing at the station. As I always say, it's fascinating getting to see these moments in time that were captured.

Jerusalem in the Ottoman Empire in 1897 was a strange place to us today. Christians, Muslims and Jews lived side by side in relative harmony. They celebrated their own customs, and also partook in the celebrations of the others' customary feasts and holidays.

The old Jerusalem Train Station has recently been re-opened - preserved and renovated - and gives hundreds of thousands of people joy as a public area with cultural events and great restaurants and bars in Jerusalem.

The Lumiere brothers' claim to fame is that they invented an "all in one" camera in which a film could be shot, film developed, and then film projected that allowed their "actualities" - shots of real life - to be seen by an entire audience. Edison's original invention only allowed one person at a time to view one of their films and their devices were unwieldy, unlike the device devised by the Lumieres. Their camera also produced a much clearer image than the Edison's camera could produce.

With the success of the Cinematograph exhibitions in Paris during December 1895 and extending into 1896, the Lumieres made decisions on how to handle the future of the device. Jules Carpentier, the Paris-based engineer who had made 25 of the machines for Louis Lumiere during 1895, was now commissioned to manufacture two-hundred more. No machine would be sold. The Lumieres would train cameramen/projectionists at their Lyon, France headquarters and send them around the world to capture views (soon to be called "actualities") that would be sent back to France for processing and then distributed for exhibition. Exhibitors were franchised by the Lumiere company but were required to use Lumiere employees, who were Lumiere-trained projectionists, for all their presentations.

It was under the above arrangement, that a Lumiere cameraman arrived in Jerusalem during 1896. One film that he made had to have a profound effect on the audience of that day. People who had never been more than a few miles from home could be in Jerusalem and for one minute, actually see their departure from that holy city in that holy land.

We are standing on the observation platform, on the rear car of a train, for our last look at Jerusalem which is seen only through our eyes. Men are standing on the tracks looking at us. In the background are what appears to be stone ruins in an arid area. Abruptly, the train moves away from this scene and the view widens as the men appear to wave good-bye. As massive stone walls come into view, we realize there is a train station platform. We glide past the crowd in front of the station; there to bid us farewell. Christians, Jews or Muslims can relate to the people on the platform; seemingly wistful at our departure. There is a visceral appeal of being in a wonderful place and leaving it with sadness. Forty-four seconds after the start, the screen goes blank.

This type of picture, where the viewer is propelled through a scene by an unseen force, would be used (during the next few years) by a large number of cinematographers and would be called a "phantom ride."

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

With the usual descriptive title I had assumed this would be footage of a train leaving a station in the way that most of the Lumière films I had seen on this collection so far had been about a static shot of an action occurring. So it did actually make me go "oh" to see that the camera this time was on the item that was doing the action and pointing away from it rather than towards it. To the modern eye of course all we're looking at is a train leaving a station – and not even a particularly visually interesting station at that neither. However watched in context of the historical development of the media it is interesting to see the camera taking a person's view – right down to the people waving at "it" as it leaves.

Unlikely to blow your mind or anything like that, but this film is interesting for seeing the development of ideas and techniques by Lumière.

A camera attached to a train pulls out of a station in Jerusalem, watched by genial onlookers. If one's mind and imagination are open, the effect is thrilling, taking to its logical conclusion movement within a static frame, and also reversing the experience of 'Arrivee d'un train'; now the audience is no longer frightened by an oncoming threat, a passive victim to a locomotive object, but part of that movement, with the camera transporting us from reality, from the stable and still, a transport the cinema has made its raison d'etre.

The film is cherisable for other reasons - the smiles of the observers left behind; for the complex interplay of gazing this prompts - with whom do we identify, the looker or the thing looked at: we share properties with both; the beautiful gliding movement which does not mirror any experience I've ever had on a train, that transport medium on its way out as cinema begins its conquest.

Most moving of all is the vision of late-19th century Jerusalem that rises miraculously from the reassuringly familiar station, vast ruins which are not as other ruins, but seem like petrified tears, as with the trees in 'Sleepy Hollow' or 'Saddle the Wind'. This view of a city, already weighed down with history and contention, yet untainted by the blight of the 20th century, is breathtaking, and a little humbling.