The Beginnings of Moviemaking in the United States

By Michael Russell

The Great Train Robbery was a film made in 1903 and was the first American film that had a story to tell its audience. It was made by Edwin S. Porter and it lasted for eight minutes. This was a silent movie and had a "cops and robbers" plot, like a lot of films that followed it. Printed subtitles were eventually added to the silent movies in 1912. These subtitles were flashed together with the action scenes to help the audience understand what was happening. In order to add more drama and excitement to the scenes, an untiring pianist would play throughout the movie. He would switch from fast music for exciting or dramatic numbers to a more sentimental and slow music as the mood of the picture changed.

In April of 1914, the first large theater was built for the sole purpose of showing films. This theater was able to hold 3000 people. The building of this grand scale theater inspired the age of magnitude and splendor in motion pictures.

In 1915, David Wark Griffith produced a 3-hour film entitled The Birth of a Nation. The movie was about the American Civil War and the Reconstruction or the rebuilding of the South. This movie was a great advancement in the film industry. This was not only because of its controversial topic, which was a story that was told from the perspective of the defeated South, but it introduced a much more developed and refined camera technique. The movie used a series of close-ups and long shots in combination with very unique editing, which is the arrangement of the shots. This camera technique was able to bring the historical setting to life and immerse the audience in the epoch. Griffith also added a full orchestra in the theater pits. The orchestra played an especially composed musical score and added the sound effects. The music together with the camera technique mesmerized the audience. The Birth of a Nation was the first epic of American cinema.

Before long motion pictures were made, "flickers" as long as 20 minutes were shown in small stores called Nickelodeons. However, in the advent of large-scale motion pictures, these Nickelodeons expanded into larger theaters. When they did not have motion pictures to show, they had showed "serials". These serials were divided into 20-minute episodes. One episode was shown every week and it would always end with the hero and heroine facing another dilemma. The term "cliffhangers" came from these serials because the hero or the heroin was often left hanging dangerously over a cliff at the end of the episode. The audience would have to wait until the next week to see what would happen to them. This strategy secured a continuous and interested audience.

Earlier, films were made by small independent producers. But with the birth of the large theater, silent movies had become a booming business in the span of 20 years. The films were now produced by companies of producers or studios. Some of these companies were Paramount, Warner Bros., Universal and United Artists. As a consequence of World War I, most of these the big-shot producers moved to California. The center of the production of American films became Hollywood, which is an area within Los Angeles. It was not long until Hollywood acquired its reputation for glamour and made it a famous name around the world. This status of Hollywood is true even today.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Movies

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