Liberties

This black train, puffing out clouds of white smoke, still races towards the viewers. They say some jumped up in fright, thinking the catastrophe was about to occur. The light on the wall of the salon, light from an incarnate summer’s day – so different from the Paris light at the same moment, outside on the squares, the boulevards – flooding over them as they sat in the dark. Perhaps it was panic, maybe also concern for the child on the hand of the elderly lady (Madame Lumière, as we know now), toddling so close to the edge of the platform. Concern perhaps, also shock, but not yet horror at all the implacable trains that have criss-crossed the century, the endless rows of sealed trucks. The tracks heading straight towards them, past them and out of the frame. And like the smoke from the chimney, the shadows of those waiting impatiently, like the film itself, ghostly, the fatal locomotive of time. translated by Karen Leeder