The History of Cinema

Luca Gauthier

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4 min read

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Oct 8, 2023

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Introduction

Cinema is one of the most popular entertainment industries in the world, producing billions each year. The Motion Picture Association stated that, in 2019, the industry, internationally-wise, reached 101 billion USD: the international box office made 42.2 billion globally and streaming movie entertainment accounted for 58.8 billion worldwide.

But it didn’t just appear, like all significant inventions that became industries, it had evolutions, downfalls. In this article you’ll learn how cinema became synonymous with both entertainment and art .

Who invented cinema?

Cinema wasn’t invented by just one person, it’s a succession of inventions. In 1891, Thomas Edison, by that time, was losing the War of Currents and was being forced out of his own Electric Company. He also had the Edison Company, which was devising the Kinetoscope, the first device to show moving pictures. It basically looked like a big wooden box with an eyepiece on top. It enabled only one person at a time to view the moving images, who would need to put their eye on the eyepiece, a bit like a microscope. By 1894, the Kinetoscope was an international commercial success, with public parlours established in most countries.

You probably know Louis and Auguste Lumière. They were born and raised in Lyon. Their father, Antoine, had a large photographic business. The young genius of Louis, who, at 17, invented a sensitive photographic plate which his family immediately started manufacturing, brought the business lots of success. After seeing Edison’s Kinetoscope in Paris, the father, Antoine, urged his sons to invent an object that would take and project moving pictures. And they made it: it was called the Cinématographe, it was a camera, projector and printer all in one. Their first projection was to a paying audience in December 1895 in Paris.

Early Films

The first movies were very short, they could last only a few minutes. They were shown a bit everywhere: fairgrounds, music halls, anywhere where a screen could be set up, and the room darkened. The films would offer views of other countries, newsworthy events and short comedies. Although, as it is sometimes thought to be the case, the movie wasn’t silent, most of the time they were narrated or accompanied by lectures or music and audience participation.

By 1914, several film industries had been established; Europe, Russia and Scandinavia were the most dominant. An increasing amount of people paid to see movies, thus helping the industry evolve and invest in cinemas and studios. However, WW1 brought the industry in Europe to a frightening halt, enabling the American industry, grow in importance and become the Hollywood we know today.

A significant director in the history of the early years and arguably the whole of cinema, is George Méliès. Scorsese himself paid tribute to him in his movie ‘Hugo’.

The Parisian had started out as an illusionist, but once he discovered the Cinématographe, he began making films starring his wife and himself, using a backstage crew. He is best known for incorporating his illusionist skills to create special effects like never before.

Méliès made over 500 films from the 1890s to the 1910s. When WW1 started, he went bankrupt, people, especially soldiers, had seen too many horrors and couldn’t care anymore for the fanciful science-fiction stories by Méliès. He shut down his studio and destroyed most of his negatives, in order to sell the silver contained in the film. In total today, we managed to recover 231 of his movies. Perhaps his best film is considered to be “A Trip to the Moon” or “Un voyage Extraordinaire” .

Adding colour and sound

At first, colour was added to black-and-white movies by hand-colouring the frames , a painstaking long process. But in 1909, the British Kinemacolor process was introduced to the public. It was an additive process meaning it would alternate red and green filters in front of the camera and the projector. In 1915, Technicolor was invented; it was the same idea as the Kinemacolor but more effective; the camera would have a beam-splitting optical cube. As the light beam entered the camera, it would be split into three parts, one favouring the red part of the spectrum, one the green and one the blue. Each image would be captured simultaneously on three black-and-white strips and each of the three different beams would hit the strips. The three strips would then be developed separately, printed and dipped in the appropriate dye, matching the beam they were hit by. They were finally laminated together to produce the natural colour.