This document provides a brief history of film from early inventions like the zoopraxiscope in 1867 to key moments and films through the 2000s. It covers the development of motion pictures in the 1890s, early narrative and epic films from 1902-1916, silent film classics of the 1920s, talkies and genres in the 1930s, technological advances and genres in the 1940s-1950s, international movements like Italian neo-realism and French New Wave in the 1940s-1950s, increasing social topics and violence in the 1960s-1970s, the rise of blockbusters, cult films and Asian cinema in the 1970s-2000s.

1. Film
Key Moments
Malaspina Great Books

2. zoopraxiscope
Invented 1867 – moving photos watched through a slit

3. Motion Pictures
• Louis Lumiere invented 1896: portable
motion-picture camera, film processing
unit and projector called the
Cinematographe

4. Le Voyage Dans La Lune
(A Trip To The Moon) (1902)
• First “Motion” picture

5. The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• The first narrative film

6. The Perils of Pauline (beginning in 1
• A series of short suspenseful serials

7. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
• The first American epic film

8. Intolerance (1916)
• One of the greatest epic films of all time

9. Broken Blossoms (1919)
• A silent film masterpiece, dealing with
controversial subject areas including racial
prejudice and child abuse.

10. Way Down East (1920)
• A powerful melodrama starring silent film
immortal Lillian Gish.

11. The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse (1921)
• Memorable for the visit of the Four
Horsemen - war, conquest, famine, and
death

12. Orphans of the Storm (1921-2)
• Set against the backdrop of the French
Revolution

13. The Covered Wagon (1923)
• A landmark silent western film.

14. Greed (1924)
• Originally at 10 hours, but severely edited
down, one of the masterpieces of the
silent era

15. The Big Parade (1925)
• At its time, it was the largest grossing
silent film ever. Focus WW I - extremely
realistic battle scenes.

16. Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (1925)
• First filmed in 1907, this remake cost $2
million at the time, and is one of the most
outstanding examples of silent film
spectaculars.

17. The General (1927)
• Buster Keaton's silent masterpiece, a
great comedy set during the Civil War.
The acrobatic stuntwork, Keaton's
deadpan expressions, location
photography and sight gags are
remarkable.

18. The Circus (1928)
• Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp -

19. The Virginian (1929)
• A western film and adaptation of a pulp
novel The film is most known for the
Virginian's response to a card-game insult
- he pulls out his gun, lays it on the card
table, and responds: "If you want to call
me that, smile."

20. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930
• Based on the anti-war novel by Erich
Maria Remarque and one of the best anti-
war films

21. Frankenstein (1931)
• A great horror classic.

22. Scarface
, the Shame of the Nation (1932)
• A violent, fast-paced, intense
crime/gangster melodrama, the 'first' of the
great gangster films.

23. I'm No Angel (1933)
• One of Mae West's funniest films

24. She Done Him Wrong (1933)
• A lusty Gay 90s spoof, with racy dialogue
and great one-liners. "Come up sometime
'n see me."

25. Of Human Bondage (1934)
• The first and best film version of Somerset
Maugham's tragic, classic literary novel.

26. David Copperfield (1935)
• film adaptation of the Charles Dickens
novel

27. Modern Times (1936)
• One of the last great "silent" comedy
masterpieces, with music, sound effects,
and very limited gibberish dialogue/singing

28. The Hurricane (1937)
• spectacular disaster film set in the South
Seas.

29. Pygmalion (1938),
• A delightful romantic comedy, the first film
version of George Bernard Shaw's
stageplay and screenplay

30. Of Mice and Men (1939)
• A film adaptation of John Steinbeck's
Depression-era classic novel

31. Turning Points
• 1940 Disney's groundbreaking Fantasia introduced a
"Fantasound" 'stereo-like', multi-channel soundtrack
• 1940 Citizen Kane: It has been the most highly-regarded
film in cinematic history, with many ground-breaking film
techniques. The controversial film, banned from
advertising in all of Hearst's newspapers, was noted for
its creative experiments with sound (i.e., overlapping
dialogue and layered sound), for its numerous complex
flashbacks (and non-linear storytelling), and for Gregg
Toland's cinematography, including innovative camera
angles (low-angle shots revealing ceilings), montage,
mise-en-scene, deep-focus compositions, tracking shots,
whip pans, lengthy takes, and dramatic or
expressionistic low-key noirish lighting.

32. • 1941 The first, generally-acknowledged film noir was released, John
Huston's The Maltese Falcon.
• 1942 Tweety Bird
• 1942-ff Propaganda films
• 1945 Roberto Rossellini's influential landmark film Open City formally
introduced Italian neo-realism, marked by a gritty and realistic post-war
film style. Characteristics included the use of on-location cinematography,
grainy low-grade black-and-white film stock and untrained actors in
improvised scenes.
• 1945 The rarely-seen film Momotaro: The Holy Soldier of the Sea,
financed by (and starring) the Japanese Imperial Navy and directed by
Mitsuyo Seo, was the first feature-length anime film ever made.
• 1955 Blackboard Jungle was the first film to feature a rock-'n'-roll song,
"Rock-Around-The-Clock." (sung by Bill Haley and His Comets during the
credits). It was the first major Hollywood film to use R&R on its
soundtrack. It inspired the next year's popular R&R film, Rock Around the
Clock (1956).
• 1959 New Wave Film: jump cut, the hand-held camera, natural lighting,
non-linear storytelling, on-location shootings, and loose, improvised
direction and editing.

33.  1964 Michelangelo Antonioni's and cinematographer Carlo DiPalma's visually-
impressive French-Italian co-production Red Desert made spectacular use of the
recently-perfected telephoto lens, to create a shallow depth-of-field. It was also
Antonioni's first film in color, used in extreme and expressive ways.
 1966 After an appeal by Warner Bros., Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf became
the first film containing profane expletives and frank sexual content to receive the
MPAA's Production Code seal of approval.
 1967 Director Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde was promoted with the slogan for
its anti-heroes: "They're young. They're in love. They kill people." The anti-
establishment, violent film, originally criticized at the time of its release, was aimed
at youth audiences by its American auteur and producer/star Warren Beatty.
 1967 The first contemporary music (rock 'n roll concert) industry film, Monterey
Pop (1968), was filmed at the historic Monterey International Pop Festival in
California, featuring such performers as Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Mamas and
the Papas, Janis Joplin, The Who
 1968 Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey reinvented the science fiction
genre.
 1969 Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent western The Wild Bunch was exceptional for
its non-glorification of bloodshed, and its slow-motion, heavily-edited, stylized
views of multiple deaths -- it was influential for other filmmakers ranging from
Martin Scorsese to John Woo to Quentin Tarantino in years to come.

34. • 1972 The popular, low-budget, adult-oriented, X-rated Deep Throat, the
second hard-core pornography feature film released in the US (after Behind the
Green Door) contributed to the explosion of the porn industry and 'porn chic' by
being exhibited in many mainstream film theatres.
• 1973 The science-fiction classic Westworld was the first movie to make use of
"digitized images",
• 1975 Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a film version of the
original international stage hit, was a commercial failure when originally
released, but has since achieved major cult film status, and has been
considered the longest-running 'midnight movie' of all time
• 1977 Star Wars
• 1988 Director Martin Scorsese's controversial movie The Last Temptation of
Christ opened in nine cities despite objections by some Christians who felt the
film was sacrilegious.
• 1993 Spielberg's Holocaust drama Schindler's List demonstrated the power of
the medium to influence audiences and capture the reality of past history.
• 1994 Director Oliver Stone's controversial work on the media's exploitative
precoccupation with violence by following the path of two serial killers on a
murder spree, Natural Born Killers, came under critical fire for its own graphic,
on-screen violence.

35. • 1995 Danish director Lars von Trier announced the manifesto of the
Dogme 95 collective and movement, a return to simplicity in film-making.
Ten goals or principles of the collective's 'Vow of Chastity' included on-
location shoots, use of hand-held cameras and use of digital-video (DV),
an uncredited director, no special effects or fixes in post-production, and
no major enhancement of sound or light even on set. This type of film-
making stood in sharp contrast to Hollywood's big-budget blockbusters.
• 1999 The pseudo-documentary, low-budget (budgeted at $22,000),
media-savvy cult film The Blair Witch Project, grossed $240 million
worldwide
• 2000 The emerging cinema of China, beginning in the mid-1980s and
after (i.e., Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and The Story of
Qiu Ju (1992), Chen Kaige's Farewell, My Concubine (1993), and Tian
Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite (1993)), began to capture critical attention.
• 2002 The independently-produced romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek
Wedding became the most profitable movie of all time, earning more than
$240 million at the box office, while costing only about $5 million to make.
• 2004 Michael Moore's controversial Fahrenheit 9/11 won the top prize,
Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It also broke the record for
highest opening-weekend earnings in the US for a documentary, and
established a significant precedent for a political documentary.