Mark Cousins's The Story of Film: An Odyssey

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

In a long, diaphanous skirt, held out by her hands with arms extended, Broadway dancer Annabelle Moore performs. Her dance emphasizes the movement of the flowing cloth. She moves to her right and left across an unadorned stage. Many of the prints were distributed in hand-tinted color.

La Sortie des usines Lumière is one of the first films in the history of cinema and a milestone. Three different versions of the film exist.

Strong-man Eugene Sandow flexes his muscles and strikes a few poses in front of a black background. This was a short film shot by William K.L. Dickson for the American Mutoscope Company and is not the 1894 Edison film shot at the Black Maria.

A train arrives at La Ciotat station.

They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.

This legendary fight was filmed on March 17, 1897, using 63mm film that produced an aspect ratio of about 1.75:1. Using three adjacent cameras, Enoch Rector recorded the entire fight, simultaneously creating the world's first known feature film, as the resulting footage lasted over 90 minutes in length. About a quarter of the film survives today.

An astronomer has a terrifying dream.

A fairy godmother magically turns Cinderella's rags to a beautiful dress, and a pumpkin into a coach. Cinderella goes to the ball, where she meets the Prince - but will she remember to leave before the magic runs out? Méliès based the art direction on engravings by Gustave Doré. First known example of a fairy-tale adapted to film, and the first ...

Produced and directed by George Albert Smith, the film shows a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel. The Kiss in the Tunnel is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing. It is in fact, two films in one, hence the 2 min length. Firstly, the G.A. Smith film here for the central cheeky scene in the carriage. The...

In front of one of the largest newspaper offices is a hot air shaft through which immense volumes of air are forced by a blower. Ladies in crossing this shaft often have their clothes slightly disarranged. A young lady and her male companion walk slowly along until they stand directly over the air shaft. The young lady's skirts are suddenly rais...

Porter's sequential continuity editing links several shots to form a narrative of firemen responding to a house fire. They leave the station with their horse drawn pumper, arrive on the scene, and effect the safe rescue of a woman from the burning house. But wait, she tells them of her child yet asleep in the burning bedroom...

After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.

A simple scene of two rather flamboyantly-dressed Edwardian children attempting to feed a spoonful of medicine to a sick kitten. The film is important for being one of the earliest films to cut to a close-up, then back again to the same medium shot as before.

This movie depicts the life of notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly.

The film portrays the events on the day King Henri III of France arranged for Duke Henri de Guise to be murdered.

A woodsman leaves a hut followed by a woman with their baby. Nearby some men chop down a tree. The baby is left outside the hut, but an eagle flies away with it.

In an Indian tribe, a girl escapes from her father and suitor to be with the man she loves.

A pair of young ladies cause trouble at the cinema with their lavish hats.

Magda, a piano teacher, meets Knud, a parson’s son, who invites her to spend the summer at his parents’ parsonage. When a travelling circus stops in the village, Magda leaves the meek Knud for the dashing circus rider Rudolf. But circus life with Rudolf quickly turns out to be anything but happy, and Magda comes to a tragic end.

During the Civil War a young soldier loses his nerve in battle and runs away to his home to hide; his sister puts on his uniform, takes her brother's place in the battle, and is killed. Their mother, not wanting the shameful truth to become known, closes all the shutters (hence the film's title) and keeps her son's presence a secret for many yea...

It's early autumn and Dr. Headley eagerly demonstrates what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Not far from where he is working, the disease seems preparing to soon claim yet another life, a teenage girl named Winifred. Winifred's mother and little sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred tha...

After Ingeborg Holm's husband becomes sick and dies, the family's small grocery store fails, Ingeborg becomes bankrupt, and she is forced to move to the workhouse. Her three children go to foster homes. Ingeborg simply must see them again.

"Titanic Disaster" is a newsreel released to capitalize on the Titanic sinking. The credibility of most of the footage is questionable, as the individuals are misidentified, and the only surviving footage of the ship was filmed before her maiden voyage, with the ship visibly unpainted. This film differs from the now-lost American newsreel: Gaumo...

Revolves around the noble and righteous king, Harishchandra, who first sacrifices his kingdom, followed by his wife and eventually his children to honor his promise to the sage Vishwamitra.

Abandoned by her maidservant in an isolated country house, a mother must protect herself and her baby from an invading tramp while her husband races home in a stolen car to save them.

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, ...

Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as th...

On the brink of war, Lt. van Hauen is summoned to take command of the cruiser, but due to unforeseen events, he is wrongfully convicted as a traitor.

Blamed for the theft of an orphans fund, Captain James Wynnegate flees to the West where he makes a new life with the Indian woman Nat-U-Rich.

Andrei lives a secluded life with his aunt, studying and thinking about his now-deceased mother.

Based on the 1856 Gustav Räder play Robert and Bertram about the adventures of two wandering vagrants, which has been turned into films on several occasions.

The Birth of A Nation is a silent film from 1915 and the highest grossing film in film history. The film tells a romance story during the American civil war.

Four historical tales depict the ongoing human struggle against prejudice and inhumanity.

Lonesome Luke has a movie theater and also works the box office and as an usher. He has to put up with, among other things, an incompetent projectionist who falls asleep all the time. Complications ensue.

An Austrian military officer and roue' attempts to seduce the wife of a surgeon. The two men confront each other in a test of abilities that ends surprisingly.

A pampered American oyster tycoon decides to buy a husband for his daughter, but things don’t go quite as planned. Along the way there are mishaps, misunderstandings and a foxtrot sequence that must be seen to be believed.

A judge sees his illegitimate daughter facing a trial for the murder of her newborn child, also out of wedlock. He is certain that she will be sentenced to death.

After numerous failed attempts to commit suicide, our hero (Lloyd) runs into a lawyer who is looking for a stooge to stand in as a groom in order to secure an inheritance for his client (Davis). The inheritance is a house, which her scheming uncle "haunts" so that he can scare them off and claim the property.

The story involves two newlyweds, Keaton and Seely, who receive a build-it-yourself house as a wedding gift. The house can be built, supposedly, in "one week." A rejected suitor secretly re-numbers packing crates. The movie recounts Keaton's struggle to assemble the house according to this new "arrangement".

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.

A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

A young man schemes to drum up business for his girlfriend's employer but after seeing her being intimate with another man, he attempts to commit suicide.

Against a dark background, several bright, curved or rounded shapes pulse towards the center of the screen, one at a time. They are followed by many other shapes, some irregular, some pointed, others rounded. The abstract shapes move into or across the screen in harmony with the musical score.

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.

A small town boy dreams of being a famous fiddler; Meanwhile, two convicts escape from prison and hide in the woods.

The Tramp cares for an abandoned child, but events put that relationship in jeopardy.

A charismatic lieutenant newly assigned to a remote fort is captured by a group of mountain bandits, thus setting in motion a madcap farce that is Lubitsch at his most unrestrained. A wonderfully anarchic and playfully subversive satire of military life from one of the great comedy filmmakers.

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.