3. The Birth Of A Nation (1915)

US 190m Silent BW

Director: D. W. Griffith

Producer: D. W. Griffith

Screenplay: Frank E. Woods, D. W. Griffith, from the novel The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the novel The Leopard’s Spots, and the play The Clansman by Thomas F. Dixon Jr.

Photography: G. W. Bitzer

Music: Joseph Carl Breil, D. W. Griffith

Cast: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mary Alden

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Simultaneously one of the most revered and reviled films ever made, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is important for the very reasons that prompt both of those divergent reactions. In fact, rarely has a film so equally deserved such praise and scorn, which in many ways raises the film’s estimation not just in the annals of cinema but as an essential historic artifact (some might say relic).

2. The Great Train Robbery (1903)

US 12m Silent BW (hand-colored)

Director: Edwin S. Porter

Screenplay: Scott Marble, Edwin S. Porter

Photography: Edwin S. Porter, Blair Smith

Cast: A. C. Abadie, Gilbert M. “Bronco Billy” Anderson, George Barnes

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Most histories regard The Great Train Robbery as the first Western, initiating a genre that was in a few short years to become the most popular in American cinema. Made by the Edison Company in November 1903, The Great Train Robbery was the most commercially successful film of the pre-Griffith period of American cinema and spawned a host of imitations.

1. Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902)

France 14m Silent BW

Director: Georges Méliès

Producer: Georges Méliès

Screenplay: Georges Méliès, from the novel Le Voyage dans la Lune by Jules Verne

Photography: Michaut, Lucien Tainguy

Cast: Victor André, Bleuette Bernon, Georges Méliès, Jeanne d’Alcy, Henri Delannoy

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When thinking about A Trip to the Moon, one’s mind is quickly captured by the original and mythic idea of early filmmaking as an art whose ”rules” were established in the very process of its production. This French movie was released in 1902 and represents a revolution for the time, given its length (apprx 14 minutes), as compared to the more common two-minute short films produced at the beginning of last century.