Ignoring 10-second clips of people walking around in circles or cats in boxing rings, George Méliès Le Voyage Dans la Lune is the first motion picture. Literally a magician, Georges Méliès pioneered both modern visual storytelling and special effects. Utilising jump cuts and force perspective to create illusions yet to be seen by folk in the 1900’s by laying the seeds for years to come. He’s created a film with the a proper throughline story about some scientists and wizards setting up a plan to fly to the moon. Using modern science, they load up a capsule full of people and blast that mf out of a cannon. We get this iconic and pretty creepy shot of the moon, in which our adventure begins, yet, they walk out, without space suits and still survive *cinema sin ding. They meeting the locals, getting chanced by and attack them. Something we can clearly see as a metaphor for colonialism.The sets are genuinely impressive at times and there were points throughout when I thought, ‘Yeah I can see the seam of the set’ and then they walk deeper into it. It’s set up the ground work for future editing, jumpcuts, sets and costumes. It’s a landmark of filmmaking and out of general curiosity of where everything started, I would recommend checking it out. It’s only like 15 mins long, quick watch

A silent film with a more complex narrative and numerous characters, The Great Train Robbery laid the foundation of the Western genre. Directed by Edwin S. Porter and written by Scott Marble and Porter, as the title suggests, a couple of bandits shoot their way through a train to rob the patients. A chase begins and the robbers are hunted down in the forest where we get the iconic ending of the bandit shooting at the camera. A stunt so advanced Alec Balwin failed to replicate. Using blanks, the way characters will drastically fall to the ground only to then shuffle themselves to a more comfortable position reminds me of a bunch of kids playing cowboys. It’s pretty charming to watch and honestly, is something we still haven’t really removed from modern movies. Rarely do they have realistic deaths but most 80s action movies have people clutching their wounds and stumbling around before dying. Again, another quick one clocking in at 20 mins, worth it for the quick watch. Unlike our next film...

It’s strange to watch a movie that is so ahead of its time, laying the foundation of large scale movies to come, while also hating almost everything the movie stands for. Directed by D.W. Griffith and written by both Griffith and Frank E. Woods, based on the book The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr., this movie did for the Ku Klux Klan as what The Exorcist did for exorcisms. A once-dead practice that was revived due to the movie and whose out dated presence is still felt today. This movie honestly took me 4 days to finish because it’s 3 hours long and believe it or not, the subject matter did not interest me. There is complexity in the story with characters on from various families fighting against each other within the civil war. And I mean this truely, the war scenes are fantastic. The battlefields are vast, we’ve got a shit load of extras that will become a staple in the Griffith Cinematic Universe. And we have these small poetic moments and quotes like, "War's Peace” showing piles of corpses. So we see good ol honest Abe clearing his head at Ford's theater which triggers people let loose on racism. Flora from the Cameron family, played by Mae Marsh, gets stalked by this man who's wearing sunscreen under a UV light. Acting animalistic, he chases her to this cliff where she sees no other option than to jump… but she survives. This is one scene, this fucking scene, is one of the grimmest depiction of the African American community. Bringing them down to the level of a monster that needs to be stopped. And then we get this goofy scene where you find out how the idea for the Klans costume come to fruition. Some kids are playing hide and seek style with a bedsheet, where two little white kids scare two black kids with it. And from here the Klan is seen as the hero. They storm towns and any form of up rising from the opposing race will make them out as heroes, with parades in the streets in their honor. And the ending solidifies them as heroes as they “save” a family from a group of African American raiding a white family. The Klan are heroes in this story and even back then, people saw this as an out of touch movie… except for one group. I can see the importance for the development of filmmaking in this movie. We get crosscutting, their versions of close ups, panning shots and intricate cutting between scenes forming meaning with edits alone. But as I mentioned, this is a loooong ass movie and it isn’t my cup of tea. So if you meet anyone who watches this movie for any reason other than “I needed to cross it off the list” or “I’m required for school”, I would recommend not interacting with them. We’ll cover a movie that has a similar subject matter but done way better. ON the bright side, this was my first introduction to Lilian Gish, my light in the early stages of silent cinema.

A massive feat for the time, Les Vampires is a film serial… or more like series as they came out sporadically, is a crime thriller about journalist Philippe (Edouard Mathe) and his slapstick sidekick Mazamette (Marcel Levesque) who are dedicated to taking down the crime gang The Vampires. Each story is pretty self-contained as the main boss of the Vampires switches in and out with the lynchpin being Imp Vamp (Musidora) being the centrepiece of the series. This is 10 eps spanning over a runtime of 7 hours and it was a bit of a slog for me. It’s pretty absurd to the point where it felt like live-action Scooby-Doo episodes with some of the schemes that are pulled. I found it pretty repetitive as the series went on so it did drag out towards the end for me. As well, the sidekick started to get on my nerves because he kept looking at the camera when something was happening. It shouldn’t annoy me that much because at the time I imagine they viewed this like a stage play where this could be expected, but the fact that no one else did it, the whole thing was getting to me. I wouldn’t recommend anyone fully watching this. After the first couple of episodes, I would suggest pulling out as you pretty much get the idea of what they’re trying to do. 

Ironic coming from the director of Birth of a Nation, but Intolerance follows 4 different stories across 4 different points in time depicting various forms of intolerance. This truly feels like a cinematic epic with extremely impressive sets, costumes and copious amounts of extras. Specifically talking about the Fall of Babylon sequence, which then turned into its stand-alone movie with some extra footage. The rest of the stories vary from interesting to boring for me, which does really add to the massive 3-hour runtime. The interwoven storylines are easy to keep track of with each segment getting introduced with its unique style of intertitle. Even with the complex narrative, we still haven’t mastered the art of subtle acting as people move their limbs to appease the back row of the theatre. Although, if people were hoping to go back to 1916 to watch some non-woke content beware, a woman does fight in a war against a group of men during 539 BC. If I had to suggest anything, I would recommend just watching the standalone Babylon segment but if the runtime doesn’t threaten you, then check it out.

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