Just about every history of movies includes the anecdote that when French audiences first saw the 1895 Lumière brothers film that showed a train coming toward the camera, they fled the room in panic.
Here (PDF) is an article from the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1999 which discusses the ‘train effect’ in general. The author is a Mr. Stephen Bottomore, whose credentials I cannot vouch for but who gives a plethora of sources. (Here is the HTML version of that link. Parts of it are difficult to read and you don’t get the snazzy pictures and cartoons).
Anyway, Mr Bottomore opines like so:
Specifically concerning the Lumiere train film, the author seems to endorse Loiperdinger’s argument that mass flight would have been an unlikely audience reaction.
There really is plenty more and I hope this helps.
I remember in the 1970’s, in the Cinerama theatre in Minneapolis, watching Ice Station Zebra, and a sudden scene shift to a plane coming directly toward the camera – half the audience screamed and ducked down in their seats. And this with a group of American teenage high school students, who had seen many, many movies before.
Good movie makers still work for scenes that surprise and startle their audience like this.
Slightly different but when we visited a 3D IMAX show in Dublin one time there was a cartoon at the start in which the character climbed a ladder and the ladder appeared to fall out into the audience. Lots of people flinched, screamed, and I’m fairly sure one or two jumped to the side to avoid the falling ladder.
Have to remember we’re talking about a tiny, silent, black & white image, probably projected onto a sheet, rather than a sound and color image on a screen ten times larger than real life. And reflexively ducking is not fleeing the theater in terror. Very different experiences, even if the earlier was something brand new.
Chez Guevara, thanks. I’ll have to read that article.
Anyone who has been on a cutting edge roller coaster or 3D ride, or bungee jumped can easily see how a film of a train approaching head-on might very well provoke a flight or panic response in those who are experiencing a new level of stimulation.
I could certainly believe a few people leaping from their seats seeing something like this. Considering they had never ever seen anything of its like before.
I thought everyone might find this passage from McTeague interesting, from where the characters see a “kinetoscope” exhibition at the end of a vaudeville show.
(Since the novel was written in 1899, I think the “truck” must have been a big wagon of some kind.)
Disney’s circlevision theatre caused audiences to sway and even fall over occasionally. A modern equivalent is their “Soarin’ Over California” attraction. I am deathly afraid of heights, and they had big signs saying to stay off the thing if you suffered from that, but, I’ll be damned if I’ll stay off any namby-pamby Disney ride
Besides, It’s only motion base, and a big IMAX screen, so there is no possible way I can panic because intellectually I KNOW that
OMFG! I AM ONE THOUSAND FEET ABOVE THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE LOOKING DOWN! OMFG OMFG!
Well, I almost crapped my pants. And after I got over the shock, I went back on the ride again, and it is now my favorite thing to do at California Adventure.
But yeah, the cinema can panic you. Duh duh. Duh duh. DUh duh DUH DUH Duh DUH Duh dUH DUH DUH!
Exactly what I came in to say. They had a Circlevision movie years ago sponsored by the Bell System - a trip around the USA (called America The Beautiful??), that had two scenes that would cause people to actually lean so far in one direction that they would fall over.
One of the scenes was a plane flying through the Grand Canyon. When the plane banked for a turn, the audience leaned.
The other was more pronounced. It was a ride through the streets of San Francisco on the back of a hook-and-ladder fire engine - when it made a sharp turn, people would always fall over with the quick leaning.
As Quint was sliding down the deck of his boat into jaws’ jaws, I dug my heels into the floor trying my best to help. I do that sort of thing a lot, but have never even considered leaving.
I doubt very much that those people watching the train in that movie did either.
Time for a :rolleyes:
Peace,
mangeorge
A friend I work with, about my own age (62), and I were outside when a fashionably scrawny (boyish IMO), 20ish, girl* walked by. He made some typically male lustful remarks and asked for my agreement.
I said, “John, I don’t want to boink her (really sophisticated of me, huh?), I just want to feed her a cheeseburger”.
I guess that was my “inner grampa” talking, but I’m really not very attracted to malnourished girls*. Or youngsters.
*I don’t think of grown female persons as “girls”, but many will get all huffy if you call them “women”. Even though that’s exactly what they are.
But that’s just me.
Peace,
mangeorge
I doubt any viewers actually thought they were literally about to get run over by the train on the screen. Such foolishness would have been way too unsophisticated for a French audience. But the scene probably did cause a visceral reaction, such as other scenes do today, as some audience members might have found that unpleasant enough to have left the theatre.
Elevated Train, 23rd Street, New York (1896), a view of a train pulling into the station, wrote the Boston Herald, was “so realistic as to give those in front seats a genuine start.”
