Some Important Films

Submitted by Oedipus on Wed, 11/23/2005 - 11:15
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  1. Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890) This was the first film ever made in the United States, by WKL Dickson at Edison studios it was an experimental film and was never released to the public. also, Monkeyshines, No. 2 (1890) & Monkeyshines, No. 3 (1890)
  2. Dickson Greeting (1891) This was the first film made in the United States and released to the public, thereby introducing the general public to the novelty of "moving pictures"
  3. Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895) Generally considered to be the first motion picture in modern history (altough more an experiment from the Lumiere-brothers to use their 'invention' of film, it shows a train arriving at a passenger station...and that's it). The legend marks that the people who first saw this picture got the impression of what was going on on the screen was real, and ducked away from the arriving train.
  4. The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895) May be the first narrative (story) film ever made.
  5. The Great Train Robbery (1903) The first Westerns: The earliest cowboy films were Thomas Edison's Cripple Creek Bar Room Scene (1898) and Poker at Dawson City (1898), followed by Edison's publicity film Romance of the Rails (1902) (made by Edison's cameraman Edwin S. Porter). Other early westerns copyrighted by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. were the 21-minute long Kit Carson (1903) and the 15-minute The Pioneers (1903). But the 'first real movie' or commercially narrative film that gave birth to the genre was Edwin S. Porter's pioneering western The Great Train Robbery (1903). Porter (named 'the father of the story film') was responsible for the one-reel, 10-minute long film, shot - curiously - on the East Coast (New Jersey and Delaware) rather than the Western setting of Wyoming. [The first westerns were shot, until 1906, on the East Coast. The first western produced in the West was Biograph's A California Hold Up (1906).] The first feature-length western was Lawrence B. McGill's six-reel Arizona (1913).
  6. Life of an American Fireman (1903) was the first American narrative (story) film ever made.
  7. A Visit To The Seaside (1908) The first commercially produced color film was was G. A. Smith's A Visit To The Seaside (1908) (Kinemacolor), an eight-minute short featuring the White Coons pierrot troupe and the Band of the Cameron Highlanders which was trade shown in September 1908.
  8. In Old California (1910)) This Biograph film was the first movie ever made in Hollywood. Director D.W. Griffith discovered the little village on his trips to California and decided to shoot there because of the beautiful scenery and friendly people. On 6 May 2004 a monument will be erected at 1713 Vine Street, just north of Hollywood Boulevard. The monument is being made by Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and the actual rare film which was once thought lost will be screened at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. This is the first time the movie has been seen by the public in 94 years. The film will then be scheduled for restoration, and the restored version will be premiered at a later date. The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company who made the film is in existence today and the oldest movie company in America, established in 1895.
  9. Checkmated (1911) The first dramatic film in color was the Kinemacolor production Checkmated (1911), directed by Theo Bouwmeester, who also played the lead role of Napoleon.
  10. The Squaw Man (1914) This was the first feature-film made in Hollywood, California, which at the time was a rural area. Its inhabitants at the time were not happy during the film's production and violently attempted to stop the film from being made. One of these acts included gunshots fired at director Cecil B. DeMille on his way to his office in the morning. The start of the movie industry in Hollywood.
  11. Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) In a time when most films being made were short, this was The first feature-length comedy ever made. it was also Charlie Chaplin's first feature film.
  12. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914) This was the first full length color film in the UK
  13. The Birth of a Nation (1915) D.W. Griffith made advancements in storytelling and editing techniques in The Birth of a Nation that paved the way for the future of filmmaking. One of Griffith's key contributions was his pioneering use of cross cutting to follow parallel lines of action. From his success in using this technique comes the chase scene and many other modern narrative approaches. It was also the first film to be shown in the White House (to President Woodrow Wilson) and the first film to run over 100 minutes.
  14. Cupid Angling (1918) This is the earliest known full length American film in color. Leon Forrest Douglass is believed to have produced the first full length American color film but there could have been more before him that are not known.
  15. The Homesteader (1919) was the first feature-length movie made for black audiences. Stills from this film appear in Midnight Ramble (1994). Produced by Oscar Micheaux who was the first African-American to produce a feature film.
  16. The Covered Wagon (1923) The first big-scale epic film of the silent era was also a western, James Cruze's landmark and highly successful The Covered Wagon (1923), an expensive effort which cost $800,000 yet brought $4 million at the box-office. This feature-length western from Paramount was the historical drama of a wagon train in the mid-1800s moving westward, encountering harsh environmental and weather conditions (a river crossing and prairie fire), and of course, hostile Indians. Hollywood was encouraged to produce many more westerns in subsequent years.
  17. Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926) is the oldest existing (and possibly first) full-length animated film.
  18. It (1927) The opening shot is the earliest known use of a zoom lens in an American feature. The zoom lens became a vital tool in filmmaking and is still used in movies today.
  19. The Jazz Singer (1927) This was the first movie with audible dialogue. Synchronized sound is used only for a few scenes containing songs. Spoken dialogue, such as the famous line "You ain't heard nothing yet," occurs only immediately after songs. All other dialogue, even including offstage dialogue during one song, is displayed on intertitles as usual for silent movies. Many documentaries and historians state that immediately after the release and success of the Jazz Singer that all of Hollywood switched to sound. This is not true for several reasons. First, the Vitaphone process was very selective and only was available to select productions. Secondly, the sound process nearly doubled the budget of a film. Thirdly, the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue was Lights of New York (1928). Silent pictures would remain mostly until 1929 and some even were in 1930 and 1931. The monophone process came to films in 1928 and finally made the silent process extinct.
  20. Lights of New York (1928) This was the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue.
  21. Blackmail (1929) was the first british talking picture, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The movie that brought sound into British theaters.
  22. The Man With A Movie Camera (1929)) The film has no plot, no story but shows life in early soviet Russia and Dziga Vertov pioneered with this film editing techniques that improved the world of cinema. The film anticipates many of the techniques used over 50 years later in Koyaanisqatsi (1983). The film was way ahead of its time.
  23. On With The Show (1929) The first all-color talking feature was Warner Bros.' two-color Technicolor musical On With The Show (1929), directed by Alan Crosland with Betty Compson and Joe E. Brown, which was premiered at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York on May 28, 1929.
  24. Woman in the Moon (1929) (Frau im Mond) was the film to show the first countdown to launch of a rocket. Not just the first one in a movie, but the first ever: it was invented as a dramatic device for the movie. Also depicted for the first time are the use of liquid rocket fuel, a rocket with two stages, and zero gravity in space. Countdowns, liquid rocket fuel, rockets with two stages, and zero gravity in space are all used in movies today
  25. Murder! (1930) The first film where a persons thoughts were presented by voice-over was Murder! (1930) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The scene where Sir John thinks out loud in front of a mirror had to be filmed with a recording of the lines and an orchestra hidden behind the set as it was not possible to dub the soundtrack later. This technique was very important and widely used in the films noir of the 1940's and is still used in filmmaking today.
  26. The Exile (1931) This movie was advertised as the first Black American "talkie". Produced by Oscar Micheaux who was not only the first African-American to produce a feature film but also the first African-American to produce a sound feature film.
  27. King Kong (1933) was the first movie to have a musical score written specifically for the film. After the score was completed, the sound effects were altered in pitch to conform to the music, an at-the-time unprecedented event. RKO had told Steiner not to write original music but to edit existing tracks; however, Cooper offered to pay for a new score out of his own pocket, an ultimate cost of $50,000. Portions of this score have shown up in numerous later films.
  28. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) This was the first film to be shot in Three-Strip Technicolor outside of a studio environment (on location)
  29. His Girl Friday (1940) was one of the first, if not the first, films to have characters talk over the lines of other characters (overlapping dialogue), for a more realistic sound. Prior to this, movie characters completed their lines before the next lines were started.
  30. Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) Many sources have claimed that director Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) was the first full-featured film noir.
  31. Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles used new cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations (in photography, editing, and sound) that have influenced and inspired filmmakers ever since and are still used in films today.
  32. The Maltese Falcon (1941) The first detective film to use the shadowy, nihilistic noir style in a definitive way was the pivotal work of novice director John Huston in the mystery classic The Maltese Falcon (1941)
  33. The Outlaw (1943) was the first film that defied the 'Hayes Code' of morals on the big screen, thereby loosening the Hayes grip of censorship. Howard Hughes refused to change anything in the movie to conform it to the way the Hayes office wanted it and he released it without his stamp of approval.
  34. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Films made prior to this one used cornflakes painted white for the falling snow effect. Because the cornflakes were so loud, dialogue had to be dubbed in later. Frank Capra wanted to record the sound live, so a new snow effect was developed using foamite (a fire-fighting chemical) and soap and water. This mixture was then pumped at high pressure through a wind machine to create the silent, falling snow. 6000 gallons of the new snow were used in the film. The RKO Effects Department received a special award from the Motion Picture Academy for the development of the new film snow.
  35. The Robe (1953) The Robe had 4-track stereo sound; was the first CinemaScope film and led the release of 33 stereo films in 1953, but stereo failed to transform motion picture soundtracks and would not reappear until 1975 with Dolby optical stereo sound. The Robe used directional sound, footsteps of Roman Legions marching from right to left, thunder and wind and rain of the crucifixion scene. The first time off-screen voices are actually heard off-screen, when voices warn Marcellus of his ship departure to Judea. Only Fox and Todd-AO would record dialogue with directional sound. All other studios provided some music in stereo for magnetic soundtracks, but recorded voices and sound effects in mono. The Robe was the second movie made in Cinemascope, but the first to be released.
  36. Animal Farm (1954) This was the first British feature-length animated film.
  37. A Fistful of Dollars (1964) Was the start of a new breed of Western. The first Spaghetti Western ever made, The American press originated the label Spaghetti Western - intended as a put down - after the release of A Fistful of Dollars. The name stuck and took on a meaning of its own. For film fans and anthologists, spaghetti western became the widely used genre term for the sagebrush sagas introduced to the world by Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and followed by his For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In 1965, the year after the Italian debut of A Fistful of Dollars, 30 spaghetti westerns were made. In spaghetti westerns, parched, forbidding wastelands replaced monumental big-sky lands. Grubby, amoral killers replaced stalwart heroes who stood tall against evil. The knights of the West became saddlebums who valued greed and gold over good. The impact of these and other changes was felt in the style and content of later revisionist films that deglamorized the American West - including Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). - Most of this info is from the 8-Page Booklet that comes with the For A Few Dollars More (1965) DVD -
  38. Lisztomania (1975) When stereo soundtracks reappeared in 1975, Lisztomania (1975) was the first film to be encoded with a Dolby Stereo optical soundtrack.
Author Comments: 

Any film that pioneered and/or improved new filmmaking techniques, including sound, camera and editing techniques, is an important film.

lbangs11/23/2005

A Sprinkler Sprinkled is a narrative film released in 1895.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

Oedipus11/23/2005

Thanks, I left the key word American out of my description of Life of an American Fireman (1903) but I corrected it and I added The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895) to the list too.

lbangs11/23/2005

Ah, that makes sense...

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

Oedipus11/23/2005

I forgot to mention that you can see The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895) here.