The first narrative movie ever was Trip to the moon of Georges Mélièrs.
It's about men going to the moon and fighting aliens, so a classical sci-fi movie but without any plot twists.
What was the movie with a plot twist?
The first narrative movie ever was Trip to the moon of Georges Mélièrs.
It's about men going to the moon and fighting aliens, so a classical sci-fi movie but without any plot twists.
What was the movie with a plot twist?
I don't know if it was the earliest, but certainly one of the earliest plot twists (and the earliest notable one that I know of) was the ending of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920). The film uses the framing device of a man named Francis sitting on a bench with another man, telling him the story of his encounter with the villainous Dr. Caligari and his assistant Cesare.
97-year-old spoiler incoming:
The ending reveals that Francis and the other man are merely patients in a mental asylum; "Cesare" is also a patient, and "Dr. Caligari" is merely the benign director of the asylum. The whole story was nothing more than Francis' delusion.
That said, plot twists are so universal in storytelling (dating all the way back to Arabian Nights, and probably even earlier), that I wouldn't be surprised if there's an even earlier example.