TEN FILMS THAT CHANGED CINEMA AND THE CULTURE OF AMERICA
February 23, 2012 Leave a comment
It is ironic that the science and art of making movies all began as a small curiosity to determine “if horses have all four legs off the ground at the same time when they are trotting.” In 1872, the millionaire, Leland Stanford, began buying race horses and he became so intrigued by this question that he hired Edward Mubridge, a still photographer, to find the answer by taking a series of pictures of one of his horses in motion. And so the beginning of motion picture technology was born although the first images were crude because of the film speed needed to capture the trotting horse who indeed did have all four legs off the ground at the same time.
It wasn’t until 1877 that Mubridge improved his camera by adding shutters and more sensitive film that he was able to obtain stunning images that moved and he even invented a projector that showed his pictures and thus was cinema born. Others including Thomas Edison began to add and invent new techniques and the first movie to actually tell a story was a short ten minute Western called The Great Train Robbery in 1903. The film also employed a dramatic sequence where a bandit fires his gun directly at the camera and the audience, an event which must have been an astonishing revelation for the spectators of that time. You can watch it on YouTube and imagine that it is 1903.
And so, in advance of the 84th Academy Awards Presentation next week, I submit my list of the ten films that went on to change the movies and, at the same time, the culture of America.