Questions tagged [cinema-history]
An account of the historical development of both movies and television series.
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What's the earliest surviving TV sitcom? Key word is "surviving"
I know Mary Kay and Johnny is the first TV sitcom, but I heard none of the episodes survived except maybe one episode from June 1949 that got archived by the Paley Center for Media, but I don't think ...
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What was the last work to feature the World Trade Center as actual footage instead of CGI or stock footage?
I was watching the 1998 Godzilla with my youngest when he remarked, "hey, it's WTC!" as the towers appeared in the background.
This got me wondering, what was the last work produced that ...
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What would be the last decade in the US that wide release movies would be shot, edited and released on film?
It is my understanding that movies started out being shot, edited and released on film - then advances in technology slowly allowed for digital editing, digital releases and then movies shot on ...
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What was the first film to depict the American military as villains?
I just had a talk with a friend and he claimed that Avatar (2009) was the first film that got an American audience cheering for American soldiers being killed. I tried to offer several counter-...
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Who was the first to take Manhattan?
We know that in 1984, the Muppets took Manhattan.
In 1989, Jason Voorhees took Manhattan as well.
Later, DeGrassi took Manhattan, the Weeping Angels took Manhattan, and countless others have taken ...
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What is the longest running death scene?
What is the longest running screen time between a character's cause of death until that character's actual death?
While most fatally wounded characters die rather quickly, others hold on to life for ...
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What is the first film to show characters watching a film?
I’ve found many lists and supercuts of movie characters watching movies. I’m wondering what the first known instance of this (movie characters watching a movie) is.
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What is the oldest piece of visual media involving computerized dating services?
TVTropes mentions the history of digital dating services, and then notes that there's media from before the 1990s about it.
Using computers as dating services did not start with the rise of the ...
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What is the first animated cartoon?
I am reading a book about film history that says that Fantasmagorie (1908) was the first animated cartoon.
Coincidentally, I stumbled upon Pauvre Pierrot which is an animated cartoon from 1882. Not ...
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How and why did Vivaldi's Spring Allegro become synonymous with "high class" in movies?
Vivaldi has been used a lot in film, and the Four Seasons is probably his most famous and popular work. Often, in films, you will hear the first party of Vivaldi's Spring (specifically the Allegro) -- ...
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Why is Mickey's dog named Pluto?
I was looking into this myself, and Wikipedia brings up this quote by Ben Sharpsteen:
We thought the name [Rover] was too common, so we had to look for something else. ... We changed it to Pluto the ...
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Is The Ethel Waters Show lost media?
The Ethel Waters Show was a 1939 NBC variety special starring actress and singer Ethel Waters, in what reportedly may have been the very first appearance of a Black person on TV.
I’d love to see the ...
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What are the precedents for the game elements of "Squid Game" beyond "Battle Royale"?
Having watched Squid Game (2021 - ), I have the feeling that, while it is very different from Battle Royale (2000), there are a number of elements that the two works have in common, in the way that ...
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Which was the first commercial movie featuring duplicates (doubles) on screen
Which was the first commercial movie featuring duplicates (doubles) on screen. By duplicates I mean, same person playing two different roles (or same role but from different time in case of Time ...
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If Sweden didn't have commercial TV channels until the late 1980s, how can these TV commercials from the 1960s and 1970s exist?
Lately, I've been watching a bunch of Swedish-language TV commercials from the late 1960s and 1970s. Here is an example from 1969:
What confuses me about this is that ...
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Was the choice of music part of the creation of silent films?
As I understand it, the music that accompanied silent films in the 1920s was done by having an organist or possibly an orchestra pit in the theaters, playing live music while the audience watched the ...
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What's the deal with freeze-framing during opening credits?
I keep meaning to ask this question, every time I see a movie from the period (roughly 1960s through 1980s) where the opening credits are shown superimposed over an opening scene — but, every time ...
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Was the Batman / Green Hornet crossover the first filmed Bruce Lee fight?
The IMDB entry for Burt Ward states:
A special piece of movie trivia is that Bruce Lee's first filmed fight scene of his career was fighting Burt Ward.
This seems a bit off to me since The Green ...
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Was Looney Tunes considered a cartoon for adults?
My siblings and I watched Looney Tunes growing up. This was before I was aware there was such a thing as cartoons for adults. Adults wouldn't really watch Looney Tunes, except when they were with us.
...
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From a historical viewpoint, when did voice-over recordings start and when did it end?
From a historical viewpoint, did all actors and actresses in the Hollywood golden ages: 30s-50s, record the audio separately? Or was it all taken in one shot?
I can't believe that every single movie ...
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What was the first TV character death to have a large public impact? [closed]
Note that I mean TV character here, not actor. By impact, I mean things like staged funerals, grieving letters sent to the network, wide-scale news media coverage, etc.
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What was the first TV series to show a toilet?
So over the weekend I was listening to my local NPR station to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and they were playing a true or false game about characters in the TV series, The Brady Bunch.
Anyways, one ...
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Who pioneered the use of Laughing Kookaburra birds to create the impression of a jungle setting?
I was sent a link to the first video below and it immediately sent me back to my childhood watching reruns of what were already old films on Sunday afternoon television.
I'm sure I've heard this bird'...
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Why do films from before 1917 seem to run faster than normal? [duplicate]
Why do the scenes in the films of year 1917 and before seem to run faster than the normal speed? Does it have to do something with the equipment of that era or that the actors used to act like that?
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Why do 90s movies often look noisy? [closed]
It is my impression that movies from around the 90s look more noisy than from other eras (in terms of picture quality, sorry I probably lack the proper terminology here). In particular, unlike what ...
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What was the first movie to use viruses as the basis for zombies?
So when you watch old zombie movies, like Night of the Living Dead, zombies tend to be a mysterious thing, they are just an unnatural event with no explanation.
Fast forward 50 years into the future ...
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How did movies start charging more for seats at the back
While theaters where plays and operas are performed charge more for those at the front, movie theaters charge more for people at the back. I remember reading about a certain maid in a movie theater in ...
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What is the earliest example of a 'gag reel'?
Having just watched a string of gag reels on youtube, I would like to know what the earliest examples of this extra material would be. I found one from 1946 on youtube but it would be interesting to ...
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Did non-Caucasian actors become famous playing Caucasian characters?
From Wikipedia:
In the early years of film, black characters were routinely played by
white people in blackface. In the first filmic adaptation of Uncle
Tom's Cabin (1903), all of the major black ...
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Is Hamilton the biggest film acquisition in history?
Coming from an article at Deadline with the headline,
Disney Paid $75 Million For Worldwide Movie Rights To Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘Hamilton’; Biggest Film Acquisition Deal Ever?
and then goes onto to ...
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What did the writers mean by this detail in one scene of one episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" from 1957?
In the 26th episode of season two of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" titled, "I Killed The Count Part II", first aired in 1957, there is a short scene, or rather a brief moment of one scene, which ...
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Most dangerous stunts in film [closed]
When researching a different question, I came across an article on horse stunts, which claimed that a stunt from the John Wayne movie Stagecoach was one of the most difficult and dangerous stunts on ...
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Origin of movie opening crawl
What was the first movie to have an opening crawl?
What was the first movie serial to summarize events in previous episodes with an opening crawl, the practice which is continued in the movies?
My ...
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Why are there no programmes / playbills for movies?
I feel like with today's movies, it would be easy to fill a small booklet with production notes, pictures and background information. Is there a particular reason why programmes (as available for ...
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What is the first movie to use a VCR (or recording device) to trick an adversary?
I was watching "Columbo: Playback", and the murderer uses a video security system to cover up a murder.
It got me thinking, what was the first movie to use video playback to trick another character? ...
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In old films, why do characters flail around when they're shot?
When characters get gunned down in old films by repetitive fire, they often flail side-to-side while standing... for a loooong time...
E.g. in Robocop (videos contain "blood"):
...
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Why were movies shot on film shot at 24 frames per second?
Title says it all!
Nowadays, everything is digital, frame rates vary and are displayed properly by media playback devices depending on need, requirement or desire.
But back before quality digital ...
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What's the longest period of time over which a time lapse film has been recorded?
Time lapse photography can create some pretty impressive visuals. I think we mostly see time-lapse photography in non-fictional works about nature, plants, or the stars. But sometimes it's used in ...
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First depiction of a quadruped robot-vehicle?
Episode 2 of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990) shows the baddies pursuing the main characters in a convertible vehicle, a submarine/ship that becomes a quadruped robot at some point of the ...
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Where did people watch trailers before internet was invented?
Now, with the Internet, we can simply watch trailers of a film on YouTube or other sites. But how did people watch trailers before all this was created? Were trailers shown in the cinemas only?
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Early credit roll before the end of the film
In the 2018 movie Vice, an "early credits roll" was used for comedic effect about halfway through the film. It was used in conjunction with text overlays with a sarcastic tone to them.
I found this ...
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Which was the first Indian mythological movie to use the phrase 'Narayana, Narayana' whenever Sage Narada appears on the scene?
Viewers of mythological movies made in many prominent Indian languages (such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi), for many decades now, will instantly recognize the phrase 'Narayana Narayana', as the ...
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Why do old gun fight scenes sound so weird and cartoonish?
In older movies (pre-90's), many gun fight scenes have cartoon sounds. I can almost imagine the scene drawn and the words KAPOING, POW, ZOINK being shown. Here's an example from 007.
...
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How commercially successful, in general are Mockbuster movies?
How commercially successful, in general are Mockbuster movies?
In a previous answer, they state that Mockbuster movies are made cheaply to turn a quick profit. Quoting from that answer and Wikipedia:...
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Damsel in Distress on Rail Road Tracks [duplicate]
Excluding the mustache villian, what was the first movie to have a person tied to a train track? Did the movie scene come from a book?
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Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films?
I've noticed it in both DVD and Blu-ray transfers of older movies (for example a few spaghetti westerns). Throughout the movie, the transfer quality is very good, and at the last scene (when there is ...
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Eastern European cold war movies
From the 1950s to the 1980s, in the Western countries and especially in the United States and UK, several movies were released, directly inspired – in different genres – by the political situation, ...
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Where did the word "mafia" appear in Puzo's original screenplay of "The Godfather"?
The New York Times documents that Joseph Columbo pressured producer Al Ruddy to remove all occurrences of "Mafia" and "Casa Nostra" from the movie "The Godfather".
An article on knowledgenuts.com ...
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Distinction between propaganda films, training films, and public information films
I would like to know whether scholars in the field of film studies have produced any reasonably widely-accepted demarcation criteria for distinguishing between the following kinds of film:
Propaganda ...
user12981
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Has there ever been a live-action movie that takes place entirely underwater?
Have there been any movies that take place entirely underwater?
It looks like it is a rare kind of film that takes place entirely underwater because all the water/underwater-themed movies I've seen ...
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