自然段A

The Lumière Brothers opened their Cinematographe, at 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, to 100 paying customers over 100 years ago, on December 8, 1895. Before the eyes of the stunned, thrilled audience, photographs came to life and moved across a flat screen.

自然段A：
卢米埃兄弟在巴黎的卡普辛大道14号开设了他们的电影院，于100多年前的1895年12月8日，吸引了100名付费观众。在惊讶和兴奋的观众眼前，照片变得活灵活现，在平面屏幕上移动。

自然段B

So ordinary and routine has this become to us that it takes a determined leap of the imagination to grasp the impact of those first moving images. But it is worth trying, for to understand the initial shock of those images is to understand the extraordinary power and magic of cinema, the unique, hypnotic quality that has made film the most dynamic, effective art form of the 20th century.

自然段B：
对我们来说，这已经变得如此普通和常规，以至于需要一个坚定的想象力飞跃才能理解那些首次移动图像的影响。但是尝试着去理解这些图像最初的震撼是值得的，因为理解这些图像最初的冲击意味着理解电影的非凡力量和魔力，这种独特而迷人的质量使电影成为20世纪最具活力和有效的艺术形式。

自然段C

One of the Lumière Brothers’ earliest films was a 30-second piece which showed a section of a railway platform flooded with sunshine. A train appears and heads straight for the camera. And that is all that happens. Yet the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the greatest of all film artists, described the film as a ‘work of genius’. ‘As the train approached,’ wrote Tarkovsky, ‘panic started in the theatre: people jumped and ran away. That was the moment when cinema was born. The frightened audience could not accept that they were watching a mere picture. Pictures were still, only reality moved; this must, therefore, be reality. In their confusion, they feared that a real train was about to crush them.’

自然段C：
卢米埃兄弟最早的一部电影是一部30秒的作品，展示了一个阳光洒满的火车站。一辆火车出现并直接驶向摄像机。就是这样。然而，俄罗斯导演安德烈·塔可夫斯基，一个最伟大的电影艺术家之一，将这部电影描述为“天才之作”。塔可夫斯基写道：“火车接近时，剧院中开始恐慌：人们跳起来逃跑。那是电影诞生的时刻。惊恐的观众无法接受他们看到的只是一幅画面。画面是静止的，只有现实在移动；因此这必须是现实。在他们的困惑中，他们害怕真正的火车即将碾压他们。”

自然段D

Early cinema audiences often experienced the same confusion. In time, the idea of film became familiar, the magic was accepted -but it never stopped being magic. Film has never lost its unique power to embrace its audiences and transport them to a different world. For Tarkovsky, the key to that magic was the way in which cinema created a dynamic image of the real flow of events. A still picture could only imply the existence of time, while time in a novel passed at the whim of the reader. But in cinema, the real, objective flow of time was captured.

自然段D：
早期的电影观众经常经历同样的困惑。随着时间的推移，电影的概念变得熟悉，魔力被接受，但它从未停止成为魔力。电影从未失去其拥抱观众并带他们进入不同世界的独特力量。对于塔可夫斯基来说，这种魔力的关键在于电影创造了真实事件流动的动态图像。静止的图片只能暗示时间的存在，而小说中的时间取决于读者的心情。但在电影中，真实的客观时间被捕捉到。

自然段E

One effect of this realism was to educate the world about itself. For cinema makes the world smaller. Long before people travelled to America or anywhere else, they knew what other places looked like; they knew how other people worked and lived.

Overwhelmingly, the lives recorded – at least in film fiction – have been American. From the earliest days of the industry, Hollywood has dominated the world film market.

American imagery – the cars, the cities, the cowboys – became the primary imagery of film. Film carried American life and values around the globe.

自然段E：
这种写实主义的一个效果是让世界变得更小。在人们去美国或其他任何地方之前，他们就知道其他地方的样子；他们知道其他人是如何工作和生活的。

在电影中，记录下来的生活（至少在电影虚构中）主要是美国的生活。从这个行业的早期开始，好莱坞就主导着世界电影市场。

美国象征—汽车、城市、牛仔成为电影的主要象征。电影传播了美国的生活和价值观到全球。

自然段F

And, thanks to film, future generations will know the 20th century more intimately than any other period. We can only imagine what life was like in the 14th century or in classical Greece. But the life of the modern world has been recorded on film in massive, encyclopedic detail. We shall be known better than any preceding generations.

自然段F：
多亏了电影，后代将比任何以前的时代更加详细地了解20世纪。我们只能想象14世纪或古希腊的生活是什么样子。但是现代世界的生活已经被大量、百科全书式地记录在电影中。我们将比任何以前的世代更加被了解。

自然段G

The ‘star’ was another natural consequence of cinema. The cinema star was effectively born in 1910. Film personalities have such an immediate presence that, inevitably, they become super-real. Because we watch them so closely and because everybody in the world seems to know who they are, they appear more real to us than we do ourselves. The star as magnified human self is one of cinema’s most strange and enduring legacies.

自然段G：
“明星”是电影的另一个自然结果。电影明星实际上诞生于1910年。电影名人具有如此即时的存在感，以至于不可避免地变得超现实。因为我们如此密切地观察他们，因为全世界似乎都知道他们是谁，他们对我们来说比我们自己更真实。明星就像被放大的人类自我，是电影最奇怪而持久的遗产之一。

自然段H

Cinema has also given a new lease of life to the idea of the story. When the Lumière Brothers and other pioneers began showing off this new invention, it was by no means obvious how it would be used. All that mattered at first was the wonder of movement. Indeed, some said that, once this novelty had worn off, cinema would fade away. It was no more than a passing gimmick, a fairground attraction.

自然段H：
电影也给故事的概念注入了新的生机。当卢米埃兄弟和其他先驱开始展示这个新发明时，它的使用方式并不明显。刚开始只有运动的奇迹才真正重要。实际上，一些人说，一旦这种新奇感消失，电影就会逐渐消失。它不过是一个过时的花招，一个游乐场的吸引力。

自然段I

Cinema might, for example, have become primarily a documentary form. Or it might have developed like television – as a strange, noisy transfer of music, information and narrative. But what happened was that it became, overwhelmingly, a medium for telling stories. Originally these were conceived as short stories – early producers doubted the ability of audiences to concentrate for more than the length of a reel. Then, in 1912, an Italian 2-hour film was hugely successful, and Hollywood settled upon the novel-length narrative that remains the dominant cinematic convention of today.

自然段I：
电影本可以成为主要的纪录片形式。或者它本可以像电视那样发展，成为一种奇怪、嘈杂的音乐、信息和叙事的传输方式。但事实是，电影主要成为讲故事的媒介。最初，这些故事被构想为短篇故事，早期制片人对观众的集中能力表示怀疑。然后，在1912年，一部意大利的2小时电影取得了巨大的成功，好莱坞确定了至今仍然占主导地位的长篇叙事约定。

自然段J

And it has all happened so quickly. Almost unbelievably, it is a mere 100 years since that train arrived and the audience screamed and fled, convinced by the dangerous reality of what they saw, and, perhaps, suddenly aware that the world could never be the same again – that, maybe, it could be better, brighter, more astonishing, more real than reality.