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Arrival of a Train at Vincennes Station

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Arrivée d'un train gare de Vincennes
Directed byGeorges Méliès
Produced byGeorges Méliès
Distributed byStar Film
Release date
  • 1896 (1896)
Running time
20 meters/65 feet[1]
CountryFrance
LanguageSilent

Arrival of a Train at Vincennes Station (French: Arrivée d'un train (Gare de Vincennes)) was an 1896 French silent actuality film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's company Star Film and is numbered 7 in its catalogues.[1]

Possible survival

A page from the Beaulieu flipbook

The film is currently presumed lost.[2] However, the South American animator Bernhard Richter suggested in 2013, based on research done with his daughter Sara Richter, that a flipbook published around the turn of the century by Léon Beaulieu may be a surviving print of the film. Beaulieu was a manufacturer of flipbooks, or "folioscopes," based on movies produced between 1895 and 1898.[3]

The suggested identification is based on the type of train depicted in the flipbook, but Sara Richter noted in a statement to the magazine Variety that no conclusive evidence to link the flipbook to Méliès has yet been found. The UCLA archivist Jan-Christopher Horak has posited that, while the flipbook may well be a Méliès print, it might also be a Lumière Brothers film. The preservationist Serge Bromberg similarly commented on the infeasibility of identifying the flipbook with certainty as a Méliès film, rather than one by other early filmmakers, without further evidence.[3] Georges Méliès's great-great-granddaughter Pauline Méliès noted in an online statement that the flipbook may possibly derive from Méliès, but, based on scrutiny of the inscriptions on the train, suggested that it may be a slightly later Méliès film, Arrival of a Train (Joinville Station).[4]

The Richters have announced that they hope to gather more evidence by crowdsourcing the research project.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Hammond, Paul (1974). Marvellous Méliès. London: Gordon Fraser. p. 134. ISBN 0900406380.
  2. ^ Frazer, John (1979). Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co. p. 241. ISBN 0816183686.
  3. ^ a b c Khatchatourian, Maane (24 July 2013). "George Melies Flip Book Sets off Crowdsourcing". Variety. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  4. ^ Méliès, Pauline (2013). "Questions posées … Réponses en cours". Georges Méliès site officiel. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
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