3rd Grade Reading

The First Film

Can you imagine how it would feel like to see a film for the first time? That is what happened on January 1896. Audiences saw a short film called The Arrival of the Mail Train in movie theaters. People who saw that film were not used to seeing television or movies. Movie theaters and televisions were not an ordinary part of life in 1896. A movie theater is a place where people go see movies or films. Now, there are movie theaters everywhere, and almost everyone has a television (also called “TV”)  in their home.

The film was about a steam train arriving at the train station. The makers of the film were two brothers named Auguste and Louis Lumière. They decided that they would put the camera on the train’s path. On the screen, it would look like the train was moving forward towards the audience. Even though the film was all in black and white ( not in color), a writer for a German magazine wrote that the film "caused fear, terror, even panic."

There are stories that say that people who watched the train come toward the screen were so scared that they ran out screaming. They thought the train on the screen was about to crash out of the screen and into the theater.

Do you believe that story? Some people say that this story is not true. After all, the movie was in black and white and the audience knew it was a movie since it was on a screen. Also, seeing a train was a normal thing. True or not, the story shows how movies amaze and attract audiences.