Movie History

1894 - 1926 The Silent Era

Louis Lumiere made a movie titled La Voltige in 1895 that was about the arrival of the express train at a town called Ciotat using a machine that he has been credited as being the inventor of , the machine known as the motion picture camera. Lumiere's motion picture camera was a portable, suitcase-sized cinematographer that served as a camera, film processing unit, and projector all in one. Many others followed, improving on cameras and filming techniques.

For the first twenty years following Lumiere's invention, motion picture history was made up of silent films that were only a few minutes in length. By the 1910's however, motion pictures started to become big business, with a lot of interest being poured into making longer and more complex movies. Full length epic movies such as the 1915 classic Birth of a Nation began the trend for the blockbusters that were to follow and the stars that they would produce. Even though America has always been acknowledged as the front runner in movie production, German movies had a very large impact in the silent era. Movies such as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Nosferatu, and the Fritz Lang masterpiece Metropolis which were all trend setters in their time, producing effects that are still marveled at today. The motion picture industry made household names of its stars, people such as Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, and Rudolph Valentino became worldwide household names. People flocked to see their movies, followed the stars every moves and even dressed in the same fashions as their idols. In fact, so popular was Rudolph Valentino that when he died in 1926, over one hundred thousand people attended his funeral.

1934 - 1946 The Golden Era

With the advent of the American Studio System from 1934-1946, long term contracts were made between star and movie studio. Studios, such as 20th-Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Brothers signed long-term contracts both on directors and stars. Stars basically belonged to the studios, and had very little say about their contracts, in fact stars would usually be "loaned" by one studio to another . Stars were kept very busy as many of them were expected to make anywhere up to five movies per year, such as Bette Davis for example who made nineteen movies between 1932 - 1934. By this stage here technicolor was all the rage and sound had been in use for a few years, camera techniques, costume and make-up designs and other such things had been improved. Hollywood had entered the golden years which lasted from the tail end the depression to the end of World War 2. It has been said that it was at this time that Cinema was in its heyday because it provided an escape from the situation of the times. It was also in this time period that some of the greatest classics and most famous ever actors emerged. Movies such as the incomparable Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane made fortunes and massive reputations for the people who made them. Stars such as Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Lawrence Olivier, Bette Davis, and Errol Flynn were looked upon more as gods than as people.

1950 - 1962 The American Era

As the golden years of cinema came to a close and television sets started appearing in peoples lounge rooms, things began to change during the 1950`s. For starters the acting was different, method acting became the fashion with such notable young stars as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and 1950's icon James Dean being the most noted method actors of their time. These young actors usually portrayed socially dysfunctional young men who are trying to come to grips with their environment. These movies had a large impact on the youth of the time, especially films such as 'The Wild One' and 'Rebel Without a Cause'. The emphasis was being put on gritty realism with movies that starred some great actresses playing characters who were past their prime, emotionally vulnerable, with fragile egos usually being victimised by someone much younger. Two noted examples of this was Vivien Leigh's portrayal of Blanche DuBois opposite the younger and aggressive Marlon Brando character Stanley Kowalski in the Elia Kazan masterpiece 'A Streetcar Named Desire' . The other notable actress in this category was Bette Davis who starred as an aging actress manipulated by an aggressive younger actress played by Anne Baxter in 'All About Eve'. Drive-in movies were also a big thing which amongst many genres, showed countless science-fiction films that had a major following in this time period. It has been suggested that the aliens were symbolic of communists in the majority of the science fiction movies of the time.

1963 - Modern Cinema

Around the 1960`s the look of movies began to change, films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Look Who's Coming to Dinner and Easy Rider began to change the face of movies by looking at themes and issues that had never been tackled before. Actors such as Sidney Poitier broke new grounds by becoming one of the very first black actors to gain acceptance as a main stream star. As cinema moved into the 1970`s and 80`s certain actors and directors emerged that would take a stranglehold on cinema, making and starring in movies that would be forever considered the finest of their genre. In 1972 Francis Ford Coppola made the king of all crime movies The Godfather which established the careers of many of its stars such as Robert Duvall and Al Pacino. The year after, William Friedkin made what is considered to be the most famous horror movie of all time The Exorcist, a movie that broke new grounds in make-up and special effects.
The vietnam war was a major theme in many movies during the 70's and 80's, making people aware of what the situation was like for people who fought in this war, with such films as The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Movies such as these helped to propel the careers of their stars and directors, names such as Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, Oliver Stone, and Tom Cruise.
Science Fiction also saw a resurgence in the late seventies and early eighties with the Star Wars series, E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, these last movies being the invention of the greatest cinematic icon of the modern age, Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg's genius could be seen even in his first full length movie Duel which was so good that the legendary director David Lean wrote a letter of praise to the then unknown Spielberg. Since then Spielberg has gone on to direct some of the biggest box office successes of the modern era, apart from the already mentioned movies he has made Jaws, the Indiana Jones trilogy, Poltergeist, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. Of course any discussion of modern cinema cannot go without a mention of one particular movie, a movie that comes to show just what can be done with a simple story line that uses the most popular of themes, and some clever computer animation. Like it or hate it Titanic is definitely the Gone With the Wind of this era.

For more information on movie history visit Moviesite

Movie History Page
Last Updated October 24, 1999
Web Page by John Princiotto Murdoch University
All clip-art provided by clipart.com Graphics courtesy of www.filmsite.org and debbytraywick@ussvoyager.com