Film- When Was The First Movie?

This is a question that I have heard many people ask. A great many people are quick to say The Wizard of Oz because that is the oldest movie they can remember, but films had actually existed for a few decades before that. There were already movie stars and a studio system before the advent of sound technology in 1927, 12 years before Wizard of Oz.


The short answer to when was the first movie is-- no one knows! The idea of separate pictures shown fast enough to create the illusion of movement started in the last quarter of the 19th century. Carnival attractions of the little carousel with slits in it that when looking through it showed a horse galloping or a person dancing became popular.

It was about 1885 that someone (it was not Thomas Edison, as is generally believed; he was a strong inventor and an even more ruthless businessman) figured out how to use sprockets to string film and play pictures in sequence with a bulb shining on the film. In general, film works because different amounts of light and dark will work differently with the chemicals on the film. This is how shades of colors are shown with film.

The oldest film that is still viewable today is from 1893 France. It is a short comedy scene of a man watering the garden. A kid comes up and twists the hose to stop the water. The man looks in the hose to see why the water has stopped and gets sprayed. It is really amazing to think that we can still see footage from about 130 years ago. Film is much more likely to degrade than still photographs or paintings because of the chemicals used to produce the film. Many early film stocks are now lost because the chemicals used in its production were so flammable that entire vaults of films were lost to fire. Another reason that we have fewer films from the early 20th century, despite how many were regularly made, is that studios did not see a long-term value in preserving a film. Either they were stored without care or simply discarded once the studio had exploited them completely.

Frame Dimensions

It was much later into the 20th century that standards of frame dimension, framerate per second, and more became the norm. The 1.33 or 1.37:1 that is called the “Academy” ratio was not standard until about the 1920s. If an aspect ratio is unfamiliar to you, it is simply the width of the image compared to the height. So the academy ratio is 1.37 times as wide as it is tall. A perfect square would have a 1:1 ratio. Some filmmakers envisioned that a square would be the standard and that filmmakers would make the image inside that square wider or narrower as needed for the story. 

Today, most films are either presented “flat” with a 1.85:1 ratio (often captured with a full frame and cropping the top and bottom to make it appear wider) or “scope” (named after Cinemascope, which was a widescreen system that began in the 1950s) with a 2.35:1 ratio.  Many other aspect ratios have been experimented with over the years. I am not sure if anyone has ever tried an image narrower than 1.33:1. The widest aspect ratio that was presented in mainstream theaters was 2.76:1. Only about 5 films ever used the MGM Camera 65 or Super Panavision 70 system that allowed for this width, the most notable being Ben-Hur in 1959. The extreme width came from a 70mm (wider) piece of film and an anamorphic lens that would squeeze the image. When projected, another anamorphic lens would unsqueeze the image. Even though Ben-Hur was filmed this way, many regular cinemas did not have the ability to show it that way, resulting in them cropping off the sides of the image.

Frame Rate

Another idea is framerate, or the number of frames that occur in a second. The 24 frames per second rate that we take for granted now was also not standard until about the 1920s. Much lower frame rates per second gives film that kind of choppy look that we associate with many silent movies. Keep in mind at that time, when the camera was hand cranked to feed the film through, the speed at which it was cranked could change the frame rate. So the standard, consistent 24 frames per second could not be widely used until the cameras were automatically cranked. Even though 24 frames per second for cinema presentation is still the standard, television and video technology makes it complicated. In most European countries, the standard for video is 25 frames per second, so it is not too difficult to convert a movie to show on television. However, in North America, our video standard is 29.97 frames per second (often simplified to 30). Clearly, you can’t just speed up the movie so that it runs at a faster frame rate (the result would be high pitched dialogue). Instead, there are formulas for converting frame rates (most are done automatically by computer software today).

Sound Technology

Another film technology that is often discussed is sound. The transition from silent movies to full sound did not happen as abruptly as many people assume. Although experiments with sound synchronized to image began around 1926-1927 and the first full sound film The Jazz Singer premiered in 1927, full sound movies were the exception until about 1930. The first sound technology used were records that had to be lined up with the image. The limitations to this were quickly apparent, as the projectionist would have to change reels and records.  

Soon a way of printing the soundwaves on the film, called optical sound made it so that the sound was synchronized to each frame. At first, the sound was monophonic, meaning 1 channel, produced by a single strip of soundwaves on the side of the frame.

Once television became competition to the film industry, filmmakers needed to think of ways to attract people away from their televisions and into cinemas. Beyond various methods of creating larger and wider images (detailed above), stereo sound (2 channels) was the next step for sound technology. This meant that not only were there 2 separate sound signals, but the sound could also be directional. This means sounds would be heard coming from the right or left, relating to what was happening on the screen. 

Although 6 channel sound is assumed to be a product of the 21st century (it was for home theaters), 6 channel film sound appeared in the 1950s as well. In order to accommodate the 6 different strips of optical sound, larger film was needed. The 70mm film actually showed an image that was 65mm because the 6 tracks of sound took up the rest of the frame. 6 channels then meant that the audience could hear sound coming from behind the screen, both sides, and behind the seats. Now that most movie theaters use digital projectors, the audio source is just another digital file. 8 channels seems to be the most in common use under various brand names like Dolby.

Color Technology

The final film technology development that I will discuss today is color photography. Just like sound technology, color developed over time. Just like Wizard of Oz was not the first feature length film, it was also not the first full color film. Based on films that still exist, Becky Sharp from 1935 was in color. Before that, there were short films and experiments with color for certain scenes. Some mostly black and white films added a tint to certain shots, but it was still monochromatic. There were a few attempts using a 2 color process, which was later abandoned with the 3 strip Technicolor process. 

We still know the Technicolor name because it was (and is) very high quality. To avoid all the technical details, the 3 strip color process worked because each strip was sensitive to a certain hue and rejected other hues. The three strips would be Red, Green, and Blue. Together, they could create any color needed. It was not perfect right out of the camera. There was a lot of processing work in the lab after filming that needed to be done for it to be perfect. This processing step was the reason why many films were still black and white through the 1960s--the cost of the processing.

Later film products were able to film in color without the 3 strip processing and today, digital cameras have different photographic cells that respond to different colors, but the idea is still the same.

So unfortunately, I was not able to answer the question of the first film that ever existed, but hopefully you learned a little something of the development of film technology.

Please let me know in the comments if you have questions or would like more in depth information about particular film technology developments.