The Movies Begin (DVD)

A Five-Volume Boxed Set. The Great Train Robbery And Other Primary Works. The genesis of the motion picture medium is vividly recreated in this unprecedented collection of the cinema's formative works. More than crucial historical artifacts, these films reveal the foundation from which the styles and stories of the contemporary cinema would later arise. The European Pioneers. While some may consider the cinema a distinctly American invention, the most influential figures during it's infancy were two brothers in France: Auguste and Louis Lumiere. In the beginning, they dominated world film production and distribution. Through the magic of cinema, such ordinary sights as the demolition of a wall, the arrival of a train, a family enjoying breakfast or workers exiting a factory were transformed into mystifying spectacles of light and motion, having their premiere on December 28, 1895. Experimentation And Discovery. More than any other decade, the first ten years of the moving picture saw the greatest amount of experimentation and development. Ranging from the ingeniously creative to the audacious, the films represented in this volume offer a sampling of the primitive masterworks that allowed the technical novelty of the cinema to so quickly flourish into an artistically expressive medium. The Magic of Melies. Decades before the term "special effects" was coined, audiences of the newborn cinema were witnessing spectacular screen illusions, courtesy of the medium's first master magician: George Melies. The films collected on this disc offer an unparalleled view of Melies's career, introducing the viewer to the rich body of work that lies beyond a Trip to the Moon (1902), which is featured in Volume One of the Movies Begin. Comedy, Spectacle And New Horizons. By 1907 the cinema's initial growing pains had subsided and fairly distinct generic categories of production were established. This volume of the Movies Begin examines some of these integral works that begin to reflect the modern day cinema - punctuated with authentic hand-tinted lantern slides used during early theatrical exhibition.