"The film is associated with an urban legend well known in the world of cinema. The story goes that when the film was first shown, the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room. Hellmuth Karasek in the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote that the film "had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic."[2] However, some have doubted the veracity of this incident such as film scholar and historian Martin Loiperdinger (de) in his essay, "Lumiere's Arrival of the Train: Cinema's Founding Myth".[3] Whether or not it actually happened, the film undoubtedly astonished people in the audience who were unaccustomed to the amazingly realistic illusions created by moving pictures."
