How It All Began. Cinema

Cinema is much younger than theatre. It was born at the end of the 19th century.

The first people who showed the first movies to the public were the Lumier Brothers of France. They did it at the Grand Cafe, Boulevard des Capucines1, Paris, on the 20th February 1896.

The first films showed moving people and transport, then people were able to see short comedies on the screen.

In 1901 France was the first country to produce a dramatic film, The Story of a Crime, then The Great Train Robbery appeared in the United States in 1903.

Charlie Chaplin made his first film, Making a Living, in 1914 in the USA.

The Russian film industry was now going on its own way. It produced such great films as Protazanov’s The Queen of Spades (1916) and Father Sergius (1918).

A little later The Battleship “Potemkin” came to the screen. That was Russia’s great achievement in cinema.

In 1927, Warner Brothers in Hollywood made the first film in which an actor sang and spoke. The film’s title was Jazz Singer. It had three songs and a short dialogue. That opened a new era in films — the era of the “talkies”, or sound films.