The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes

The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost certainly seen more than a few of them. Battleship Potemkin, Dumbo, Rear Window, Dr. No, The Godfather, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Top Gun, Braveheart, Gladiator,…

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in Film, History | October 24th, 2024 Comments Off on The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes

The video above from YouTu­ber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen more than a few of them. Bat­tle­ship Potemkin, Dum­bo, Rear Win­dow, Dr. No, The God­fa­ther, E. T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al, Top Gun, Brave­heart, Glad­i­a­tor, Incep­tion: we’re not talk­ing about obscu­ri­ties here. Whether or not you count them among your per­son­al favorites, these motion pic­tures have all become near-uni­ver­sal­ly known for good (and/or Oscar-relat­ed) rea­sons, some of which may come back to mind as you watch the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma visu­al­ly retold through a fea­ture-length string of their espe­cial­ly rec­og­niz­able scenes. Though genre pic­tures dom­i­nate, “I have not select­ed those films that marked the devel­op­ment of a genre or film stream,” Day writes. “I have select­ed the most pop­u­lar and bet­ter known ones by peo­ple. That’s why I’ve includ­ed so many Amer­i­can movies and less of oth­er coun­tries, because a lot of the most famous movies through­out his­to­ry are from the U.S.” (Hence, for exam­ple, the absence of Hideo Nakata’s influ­en­tial piece of “J‑horror” Ringu and the pres­ence of Ringu, its Hol­ly­wood remake from a few years lat­er.) No mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, a ref­er­ence to Rocky, Back to the Future, or Home Alone — or any work of Steven Spiel­berg, a major pres­ence in the video — can go a sur­pris­ing­ly long way. No mat­ter how pop­u­lar these movies are, it would be the rare view­er indeed who could claim famil­iar­i­ty with each and every one of them. Almost inevitably, the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this video turns into a game of seen-it-or-not, which sheds light on the most inten­sive peri­ods of your life in film­go­ing. For my part, I must have watched almost every movie includ­ed from around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when I was just com­ing of age as a cinephile (and when even main­stream cin­e­ma, coin­ci­den­tal­ly or oth­er­wise, was in an espe­cial­ly inven­tive peri­od). It recent­ly gave me pause to hear that Amer­i­can Psy­cho is now being remade — but then, hav­ing come out near­ly a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, it’s pre­sum­ably set­tled into its place in cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Relat­ed con­tent: 100 Years of Cin­e­ma: New Doc­u­men­tary Series Explores the His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma by Ana­lyz­ing One Film Per Year, Start­ing in 1915 The Most Beau­ti­ful Shots in Cin­e­ma His­to­ry: Scenes from 100+ Films Take a 16-Week Crash Course on the His­to­ry of Movies: From the First Mov­ing Pic­tures to the Rise of Mul­ti­plex­es & Net­flix The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass Hol­ly­wood: Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma Cin­e­ma His­to­ry by Titles & Num­bers Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book. by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) | We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!

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