![panoramic vision in the railway journey schivelbusch panoramic vision in the railway journey schivelbusch](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/69/2d/50/692d50fd2946f27ebe67ceacb111543b.jpg)
The scope of this research is to portray how the image of trains and train stations are represented with the early cinema. Cinema is a mobile technology documenting the actualities of the increasing mobility in the city. However, this definition lacks something very crucial: After the industrial revolution, it is essential to underline that the new modern city life itself is very mobile. The Soviet director Vertov refers to cinema as a “Kino-eye”: A moving eye, strolling in the city, similar to Baudelaire’s “Flâneur”. Early cinema is a critical tool for documenting the increasing mobility in the modern cities. This transformation coincides with the emergence of the early cinema. Emergence of these vehicles critically transformed the way cities were organized: The mobility in the city and the speed of the daily activities abruptly increased. To achieve this particular effect, the analyzed material incorporates such elements as deteriorated footage, manipulated travel imagery and image looping enhanced by atmospheric scores, slow and fast motion cinematography or more conventional traditions of abstract formalism.ĭuring the industrial revolution, European cities were introduced with many new vehicles for public transportation such as trains and omnibuses. Particularly, I argue that Morrison’s experimental pictures, while simultaneously drawing on and playing with selected phantom ride, travel ride film and road movie tropes, exploit the dynamics between the spectator’s unique frontal perspective, visual mobilities and distant panoramic views as well as evoke a distorted experience of sensational and contemplative voyages, hence challenging panoramic perception and an idealized image of American (film) landscape intrinsically bound with the natural and technological sublime. In this paper I analyze various ways in which Bill Morrison’s travel films, Night Highway (1990), The Death Train (1993), City Walk (1999) and Ghost Trip (2000), tend to challenge the concept of the American landscape through the use of cinematic conventions traditionally associated with early cinema’s phantom rides as well as contemporary travel ride films and road movies. T he`Train E ffect' and Early Film Perception The so-called`train effect', as Y uri Tsivian has called it, which I will de® ne as an anxious or panicky reaction to ® lms of approaching vehicles, is docum ented in the early
![panoramic vision in the railway journey schivelbusch panoramic vision in the railway journey schivelbusch](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/82/eb/8e82eb534352c169879077875e7d9a83.jpg)
(To what extent ® lm historians should take anecdotal evidence seriously could easily be the subject of an entire book ) H alf a century ago, pioneer ® lm m aker C ecil H epworth com m ented on these stories of audiences cringing in terror at the Lum ie Á res' train ® lm, observing wisely`¼ that, I think, belongs to the ª believe it or notº series'. It m ust be said at the outset though, that this subject is a m ine® eld for the historian, for m uch of the evidence is anecdotal and one m ust take great care in reading it. Rather than disagreeing fundam entally with any of these writers, I hope to augm ent their conclusions, using a rather different set of data. Several other scholars have already exam ined this issue, including Tom G unning, N icholas Hiley, M artin Loiperdinger, C hristian M etz and Yuri Tsivian. (4) Evidence that som e audiences were m ore susceptible than others. (3) A possible explanation for exaggeration of the phenom enon. (2) A plausible m echanism for itÐ rooted in psychology. It is such a com m on anecdote, cited by so m any writers both at the tim e and later, that it has also been called`the founding m yth of cinem a' or the cinem a' s`m yth of origin' But did audiences really panic at ® lms of approaching trains? If so, why? A nd if not, why are the stories apparently so ubiquitous? In the course of this article I will try to show the following for the`train effect'.
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This fearful or panicky reaction has been called`the train effect'. The spectators are anxious, fearfulÐ som e of them even panic and run. It m ight be sum m arised as follows: an audience in the early days of th e cinem a is seated in a hall when a ® lm of an approaching train is projected on the screen.
![panoramic vision in the railway journey schivelbusch panoramic vision in the railway journey schivelbusch](https://railway-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Rail-Vision-Train-Detection.jpg)
G eorge R eyes,`Chez les Lum ie Á re' E xplaining a`M yth of Origin' or B elieve It or N ot In the`folklore' of cinema history there is one anecdote which seem s to be perennially fascinating to laym an and historian alike. M en threw th em-selves to one side to avoid being run over.