Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) La Ciotat is a town in South-East France and this little short may very well be what she's most famous for. While the train arrival is the center of the film according to the title, the real highlight are the people waiting for it. You see one man running in front. He obviously expected the train to stop earlier. Just like you do today when you know you should enter right behind the driver to save some way as you will otherwise need to walk the way anyway at the station where you exit.Another interesting thing is the film's hat culture. Hats and mustaches obviously were the most common thing back then, two trends we see less and less these days. Also, nobody really seems to realize that they are filmed. Just think of going to your nearest train station and start filming and imagine for a moment how people today would react to it. They'd either love it or hate it. Here everybody's just going on doing his business.

ironhorse_iv While today, it might be mind-numbing to watch. People in 1895, love this 50 second film clip. Generally considered to be among the first motion pictures in modern history, this clip was filmed in La Ciotat, Bouches-du-Rhône, France that show a group of Turn of the Century people are standing in a straight line along the platform of a railway station, waiting for a train. Yeah, that's pretty much it. The film has no story besides that yet the film became popular to watch. Most people today could never understand the fear that gripped the 1895 audience facing the arriving train. Film in a way, the train looks as if it coming right at them. Some audiences' members at the time reacted by jumping or going under the chairs as they saw the train coming at them on screen. There is no apparent intentional camera movement, and the film consists of one continuous real-time shot. Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat illustrates the use of the long shot to establish the setting of the film, followed by a medium shot, and close-up. The whole time, the camera was static for the entire film, the effect of these various "shots" is affected by the movement of the subject alone. The train arrives from a distant point and bears down on the viewer, finally crossing the lower edge of the screen. It was great use of film by Louis and Auguste Lumière. If they didn't put the camera where it is, in my opinion, it wouldn't be as good as any other early films. I really glad they didn't film the train by the side. Not only is this one of the first early films, but it also serve as one of the first horror movies. This film also gave birth to documentary film. While it's not a great entertainment film; it's does give great insight of how life was like in Victoria Era 1895. Those female hats in the film are pretty outrageous wild. It's a remarkable piece of history, but it is not the first movie like some critics talk about. Not close at all. What film earns that honor depends partly on how you define movies. Asking what was the first movie ever made is a bit like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. It's hard to give a definitive reply. If you consider Edison's Kinetoscope shorts to be movies, the first movies were from 1893, not 1895. Some historian claim that the first ever video footage was 1893's New York Fire Brigade footage. There might a film that earlier than that. The earliest celluloid film was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the Le Prince single-lens camera made in 1888 call "Roundhay Garden Scene". Before then, there was 'the horse in motion' from 1878. It's hard to figure out where Lumière brothers' film fits in with the others. It was filmed by Auguste and Louis Lumière by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a printer and film projector. Unlike all early Lumière movies, this film contrary to myth, was not shown at the Lumières' first public film screening on 28 December 1895 in Paris, France. The program of ten films shown that day makes no mention of it. Its first public showing took place in January 1896. What most film historians left out is that the Lumière Brothers were trying to achieve a 3D image even prior to this first-ever public exhibition of motion pictures. Louis Lumière eventually re-shot L'Arrivée d'un Train with a stereoscopic film camera and demonstrated it along with a series of other 3D short at a 1935 meeting of the French Academy of Science. Given the contradictory accounts that plague early cinema and pre-cinema accounts, it's plausible that early cinema historians conflated the audience reactions at these separate screenings of the 3D version of L'Arrivée d'un Train. The intense audience reaction fits better with the latter exhibition, when the train apparently was actually coming out of the screen at the audience. But due to the fact that the 3D film never took off commercially as the conventional 2D version did. The 3D film version never went anywhere beyond that point. An example of the screening of the film was depicted in the 2011 film Hugo, no less. Overall: The moving images had an immediate and significant influence on popular culture ever since and allow future filmmakers to advance the science and art to a new level of entertainment.

Red-Barracuda A train arrives at a station. And changes everything.There isn't a lot to really say about L'arrivée d'un train a La Ciotat as a film itself. It's under a minute and shows a train pull up at a busy station. But what it signifies is another thing altogether. When we see that train come closer and closer until it stops in the station, on a surface level we watch a train arrive but it actuality what we are really witnessing is cinema arrive. This short film may not be the earliest movie but it is the first iconic image of the moving picture age.Auguste and Louis Lumière weren't really artists. Their early films don't stand up to the highly imaginative work of George Méliès for example. But they still remain enormously important cinema giants. Not for the content of their films but for the fact that they kicked things off in the first place and produced the first iconic moment in cinema history. And for this reason L'arrivée d'un train a La Ciotat will always be remembered. Everyone who has a love of cinema should really take a minute of their time to pay homage to the first moment in an amazing journey.

bob the moo 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.Anyway onto this film which is the continuation of the understandable Lumière standard of standing a camera pointing at an event and then recording it happen. In this case a train pulls into a station and people get out. In terms of action it is not that interesting but in regards history of cinema it does offer something at least. It struck me that the other films from Lumiere I had seen to this point had point head on at the action whereas this one was set so that we had a wider view and that things played out across the screen towards the viewer. Also amusing is that some people become awkward when they notice the camera whereas other just bluster in front of it unaware.The usual fare then that produces little of interest in terms of actual content but has more of interest when viewed in its historical and cultural context.