The First Unintended Horror Film (1895)

A con­tri­bu­tion (which we always wel­come) from one of our read­ers in Roma­nia:

“The broth­ers Auguste and Louis Lumière cre­at­ed the first pub­licly shown movies, the first doc­u­men­taries and, with this 50-sec­ond film shot at a Provence rail­way sta­tion, the first hor­ror pic­ture. It is said that as Paris audi­ences watched the train chug toward the screen, they believed it was about to crash out of the frame and into the audi­to­ri­um, and ran out scream­ing. True or not, the sto­ry indi­cates the pow­er the medi­um would wield over its audi­ence.

The 50-sec­ond silent film [L’Ar­rivée D’un Train En Gare De La Cio­tat] cap­tures the entry of a steam loco­mo­tive into the train sta­tion in the French coastal town of la Cio­tat. Like most of the oth­er ear­ly Lumière films, L’Ar­rivée d’un train con­sists of a sin­gle, unedit­ed ‘view’ illus­trat­ing an aspect of every­day life.”

“L’Ar­rivée D’un Train En Gare De La Cio­tat” appears in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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