We are used to cinemas, free access to many films and no longer want to watch it in lower HD quality. We are already being offered not just to watch a movie, but they are attracted by different options for animating paintings - from 3D to 7D.
But it was not always so. And few people wonder how it all began. Let's find out together the history of the formation of world cinema from the first paintings to color films.
The very first film in the world - “Roundhead Garden Scenes”
It is believed that cinema appeared in 1895. But seldom where you will find references to the fact that in 1888 the very first film in the world was shot - "Scenes in the Roundhea Garden" ("Roundhay Garden Scence").
The Frenchman Louis le Prince, the author of this film, used a new technology for that time: the recording was on paper film with a photo emulsion applied to it. The scene lasted only 1.66 seconds, and on it Louis captured a walk in the garden of his son, mother-in-law with her husband and friend Harriet Hartley.
The official beginning of the movie was laid by the Lumiere brothers and their most famous film “Arrival of the train at La Ciotat station” ("L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat", 1895). He is also known in Russia under the names “Arrival of a train” and “Arrival of a mail train”.
The plot is quite simple - in 49 seconds a train stop at La Ciotat station and passengers traveling along wagons are demonstrated.
Interesting fact! This film became the progenitor of the silent movie plot, which was called "roving". It began to play directors around the world and shoot their versions at different stations.
Why is this documentary short film remembered and became a canon? For the first time, the creators of the picture were able to convey motion in space on a flat screen: the train appears from afar, passes through the entire screen, and people on a different plane (general, medium and large) go nearby.
With its realism, “Arrival of the train” so impressed the audience that they bounced off the screen, fearing that the car might crush them.
The first film with sound - "Jazz Singer"
Sound recording technology (phonograph) already existed before the advent of cinema. In 1894, Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dixon made their first attempts to incorporate sound recording into a movie camera. But the invention (kinetophonograph) remained only a technical incident due to big problems in the synchronization of devices and very poor sound quality.
Leon Guomon tried to repeat something similar in 1900: he combined the Lumiere apparatus with a phonograph. Nevertheless, the invention remained unsuitable for the birth of sound cinema for many years to come.
Technological progress required the filmmakers to move forward: the popularity of radio adversely affected the flow of viewers to cinemas. Therefore, the introduction of audio accompaniment for films has become a necessity.
Finally, October 6, 1927 saw the light of the first sound film in the world. Film strip "Jazz Singer" was released by the well-known company WARNER Bros. and is a sentimental comedy. The sound in this picture is not the conversations of the heroes and the ambient noise that are familiar to us. It uses only the overlay of musical fragments of jazz and only a few phrases are added (for example, “Well, mom, listen!”).
Interesting fact! To start sound cinema, the theme of music was not chosen by chance. In January 1917, a gramophone record with a jazz composition was released for the first time in the United States.
The tape was dubbed using the Vitafon technology - the sound was first recorded on phonograph records, which were then synchronized with the screen.
A year later, the next film was released. "The Singing of the Fools" from the same creators, but in it there are already full-fledged dialogs of the actors.
The first tape with the sound recorded on it came out in 1928 and was called "Perfect crime".
The first color film - Journey to the Moon
The Lumière brothers tried to manually color the films, but they themselves did not consider this a serious work, so there was no mention of specific paintings in history.
The Media Museum in the UK conducted many research and archival searches, which resulted in the discovery of the very first color film in the world called "Journey to the moon", which refers to the years 1901-1902.
It belonged to a filmmaker from France, Georges Méliès, who recorded the dispatch of the expedition to the moon. He managed to achieve the color effect in "Journey" with the help of three films with different colors, namely blue, red and green. Due to their overlapping, George managed to get an image of different colors. Unfortunately, he did not have time to complete the idea.
Before the discovery of the Méliès tape, Herbert Calamus was considered the founder of color cinema. In 1912, he founded the company "Technicolor" with its own technology for coloring films.
The painting was stained due to the special equipment of the shooting camera with a system of glass prisms, which divided the light flux from the lens into two. Filters transmitted the image in two colors to different films. Precisely because such a process of applying color is quite laborious and complex, the company released the first film only in 1917.
In 1922, “Technicolor” showed on the screens of the movie “Sacrifices of the Sea”, which was a huge success with the audience, although it was painted with only four colors (green, red, black, white).
The first such movie in the USSR - "Battleship Potemkin". It was released on December 5, 1925, and all its “color” consisted of a shaded bright red Soviet flag.
Despite many earlier finds, the official year of the appearance of cinema in color is considered to be 1935. Then director Ruben Mamulyan released his film Becky Sharp, which is an adaptation of the book "Vanity Fair."
Today, films are a milestone in the history of cinema (as well as the first cartoons). Ancient films are an artistic heritage, they carry a great value and experience of generations. We must not forget that progress in cinema became possible only after these first complex discoveries.
