From Peep Show to Palace The Birth of American Film

One hundred years ago, the crude realism of early cinematic exercises caused shockwaves among audiences - some even panicked. On one occasion, read a news report from the time, an old lady in the audience, quite unable to suppress a scream, started up in her seat and tried to scramble out, knocking over others on her way. This sort of reaction was not uncommon - on a screen that might have featured nothing more than minute-long dips of a running horse or a moving train, what modern viewers might see as a pale shadow of the explosive, full-colour blockbusters of 1995.