A History of Movies in the USA

Photography was a large part of public life and understanding from the mid-19th Century and was particularly important during the Civil War. People who became the first wartime photographers documented American battlefields in the north and the south, capturing the soldiers from both sides—their faces, pain, and most importantly, their humanity.

The availability of these images to the public affected the civilian population in a brand-new way. The war was not simply a skirmish hundreds of miles away, best left to the men.

And with this shift in perception, images and pictures became more important than ever. So, it’s no surprise that photography began to test the bounds of the static image, searching for a new way to bring pictures to life. From the 1850s onwards, experiments were carried out by photographers, inventors, and people interested in studying and reproducing human motion. Of course, photographs were still essential to capturing and preserving reality and people, but that was only the transposition of still moments.

The horse images were taken by the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, and within a year, he would pioneer a photo projector that would later amaze a San Francisco audience. This projector, the zoogyroscope, was a primitive version of later motion devices but was able to show a series of images in such quick succession that the human eye processed it as continuous movement.

But Muybridge’s work in moving pictures was actually quite serendipitous—it was to settle a bet between businessman Leland Stanford and some colleagues.

Nothing incredibly exciting, but the audiences of the day were mesmerized by it. After all, this was an entirely new way to see the world—nothing was fully static anymore, and anything could be captured and reproduced with the right filming and projection equipment. The world was now entirely documentable.

Audiences were mesmerized by these simple scenes, showing a man watering his garden, people disembarking a ferry boat, men playing cards, and a train departing the station. The world was now well on its way to real movies.

The first motion pictures centered solely around the idea of movement, but around 1900 the emphasis of motion pictures shifted to telling a story with those images. Filmmakers began to move beyond the technical aspects of just reproducing and showing movement and delved into storylines, plot, and characters.

In 1903, a nearly ten-minute-long film called The Great Train Robbery was screened and was the first recognizably “Western” genre narrative with a plot. Filmed by Edwin S. Porter, the film amazed audiences and its production company quickly became a household name—the Edison Manufacturing Company.

In fact, the Edison Manufacturing was one of several US production companies outside of New York who made names for themselves early on with such one-reelers, some of which are still recognizable today.

The westward migration of filmmaking and acting from its primarily Eastern US roots was prompted by the stubbornness of industry producers there, primarily those within the MCCP. Unwilling to give actors prominent billing, and wishing to keep films to one-reelers and limited storytelling for a higher turnaround, but with low quality, filmmakers were frustrated with company owners and their control over camera patents and distribution.

Finally, just before 1910, a group of dissidents including director David Wark Griffith left the East completely and moved across the country to evade the stringent patent system. Settling near Los Angeles, California, this group became the first residents of modern Beverley Hills and began setting up the first studios of Hollywood itself.

The weather was amenable to outdoor filming and various settings, and low prices in the area made it ideal to purchase land for studio complexes and enterprises.

Other smaller studios set up shop but were quickly overshadowed by the appearance of the big four in major film companies-

While this film was controversial in its own time, and even more problematic by today’s standards of equality and condemnation of racism and racial injustice, it also opened the industry to feature-length films and showcased exciting technical aspects of what filmmakers could achieve, such as close-ups, cross-cutting, fadeouts, and dramatic lighting.

Not to mention the money—the film’s budget ran over $100,000, which was an incredibly substantial figure for the early industry, but Griffith’s feature film brought in over $18 million in revenue, starting a lucrative trend that still continues.

Most importantly, Griffith’s feature film proved America’s place as a leader in the most innovative filmmaking techniques.

Horror films were another new development in this decade. In 1931, Bela Lugosi appeared as the titular vampire in Dracula, and Boris Karloff as the monsters in both Frankenstein and The Mummy. The tradition of gangster movies also began with Howard Hawks’ 1932 classic Scarface, and Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces in 1938.

And outside of genre, the moviegoing populace fell in love with stars like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Grace Kelly, and Cary Grant.

The film didn’t shy away from a combination of graphic violence and humor—something quite new—resulting in Academy Awards and a public clamoring for more.

This new wave of directors and filmmakers would further define the movies that came from this period—having learned from the classical periods of film, but embracing foreign film influence, box-office risks, and the newest technologies, these people drove the film industry forward into a new era of modern cinema.

With the rise in filmmaking technology and early computer-generated effect, these innovative filmmakers harnessed their budgets and resources directly to these new trends and launched into production. Luckily, these films tended to do well both critically and commercially, and the incredible success of 1970s titles such as Jaws, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Exorcist, and American Graffiti, even managed to also connect with audiences on a more personal level than entertainment.

These numbers led to studios embracing genres and content based on viewer enthusiasm, rather than projection, such as more violent and controversial content that became common in PG films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, and Die Hard.

Entering the final installment of movie history, the early 2000s were a virtual playground for computer-generated imagery and effects. CGI techniques were employed to create fantastical settings, impossible creatures, and jaw-dropping effects, as seen in King Kong, 300, and Avatar, to name a few. But once again, the film industry had to adjust to new trends, tastes, and movie-viewing technology.

With streaming services, phone and tablet apps, and the ability to watch movies virtually anywhere and anytime, the film industry had to adjust once again to technology and the new audiences it brought. Once again, like the era of TV broadcasting and early home video rental, film industries have changed up their strategies for monetization quite cleverly—

Banking on the sheer number of memberships around the world has definitely paid off for Hollywood and its film executives.

Many studios have announced that upcoming films will skip theatrical release dates entirely, moving their new titles directly to streaming services and video-on-demand platforms such as Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube TV.

It will be interesting to see if studios reimplement physical theatrical releases in the future, or if grand openings will permanently take place on our TV screens from the comfort of home. If anything, we might have a deeper appreciation for movies after all this!