Death in the Cinema of Attractions

There has been a strange parallel between this class and my film analysis class. In both I watched A Voyage to the Moon and Arrival of the Train and Workers Leaving the Factory. We watched a particular Cinema of Attractions film called The Electrocution of An Elephant in the film analysis classs. The film basically shows a group of people wiring an elephant in a field and electrocuting it. The elephant instantly drops and twitches and dies.

The entire idea of Cinema of Attractions seems to be based on show casing movement and life. Noone as yet in this period we're studying films inanimate objects such as rocks. But after seeing the Electrocuting An Elephant Video, I think film brings up a question of how altered the reality is in film. I wonder if people in the era of the Lumieres and Edison felt disturbed by the image of the dying elephant or felt a sense that it wasn't real. No doubt, film would be the first case in which people could view the act of death repeatedly.
Would that necessarily make the death less significant? Reliving the act of Death (oxymoron) would be surreal for the first film watchers I imagine.

On a lighter note, I was wondering if anyone figured out how Georges Melies figured out how to make those fading transitions. They seem way ahead of their time and very complex to conceptualize for the first time.