Lights, Camera, Action!

When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. The story is about a boy who discovers the long lost French cinematographer Georges Melies working as a toy maker in a Parisian train station. In the book, the Lumiere brothers (Auguste and Louis) are also mentioned. They invented the first film cameras, and refused to sell one to Mr. Melies, which drove him to create his own. I was delighted to see their story come to life this morning when we spent a few hours in the Institut Lumière (the brothers’ home/production studio/museum)!  One of their more well-known works (which is also mentioned in Hugo) is called L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, or Train Pulling into a Station. Never has anything been more accurately named, as the entire plot of this film is contained in the title. It simply shows a train steaming into a station,

but like the first 3D films, people were so shocked by what they saw on the cinema screen that they screamed and recoiled. It was a miracle! We got to see that film and many others by the Lumiere brothers, and we even visited the set of the first movie – a cobblestone street just outside of the Lumiere brothers’ film factory.

Because we had the afternoon off today, we all went back to the hostel and took naps before our evening outing. It was actually a very nice break, since we’ve been ‘going’ constantly, which is incredibly fun but also a little exhausting, as with most traveling. When we woke up (very well rested, I might add), we started to get ready for tonight’s group dinner. Everyone decided to dress up at the last minute; since we toted nice clothes across the Atlantic, why not wear them?

We took the metro downtown and went to a very nice restaurant that had a red and grey color scheme – the interior was very modern, which contrasted pleasantly with the old-time exterior. I had some of the best fish I’ve ever tasted (outside of Newport, of course!) and we all sampled a traditional Lyonnais almond tart for dessert. When we left the restaurant, the sky was dark and clouded over, and we saw lightning flashing in the distance, briefly illuminating some gold glitter flakes that were drifting down over the city. We didn’t know why it was raining glitter, but as we walked down into the metro, we hypothesized that it was either for the Pride Month or the end of Ramadan. Either way, it was cool!

As we disembarked from the metro at the stop closest to our hostel, we saw water cascading down the stairwell that lead up to the street. Like the Lumiere brothers’ earliest film, this was a mundane moment. The clouds had moved in while we were underground, and we just happened to be caught in the deluge. But as the Lumiere brothers understood, there was something profoundly poetic about this moment: just like the bolts of lightning we had seen earlier, we were energized by circumstance. After days of temperatures in the upper 90s (F), we all eagerly leapt up into the cooling rain, getting soaked almost instantaneously by the large drops. Small rivers ran in the gutters, and the streets were empty of cars. In the glow of the lamppost lights, we laughed and screeched and ran through the rain in our nicest clothes, ignoring the chuckles of the Lyonnais who stood under the cover of their doorways smoking their evening cigarettes. It wasn’t anything spectacular – Georges Melies

could have created a much more fantastical scene – but there was something beautiful about us surging into our hostel dripping with water and pure joy. I understand now why the Lumiere brothers shot so many views (nonfiction pieces) before moving on to films (stories with made-up plots); there is something elegant to be found in mundanity, whether that is a train roaring into a station or a bunch of slightly wine-tipsy Oregon college students who cannot contain their delight while running through the rain at night in France.