What an impressive achievement!
Scott Ewing, a film fanatic of some considerable devotion, has created a brilliant montage of films showcasing the evolution of film from Eadweard Muybridge in 1878, a noted English motion picture pioneer, through to the Lumiere brothers in 1895, George Melies’ 1902 classic A Trip to the Moon, and all the way up to a slew of films coming out this year.
It’s an impressive assemblage of clips that Ewing admits quickly “became an obsession of mine” and which does a superb job of give a snapshot look at the amazing ways in which film has jumped ahead in leaps and bounds since its humble beginnings in the late nineteenth century.
He is quick to note though that it is no ways an exhaustive rundown of movies produced in that time, and even contains a few quirky surprises:
“There are some notable films which are absent from the montage such as The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) and Birth of a Nation (1915). These and many others were either impossible to find or did not fit in with the creative direction of the montage. There is also a Dumb and Dumber (1994) dancing clip between Tropic Thunder and 500 Days of Summer … this was intentional I assure you.”
Nonetheless to say, if you’re short of time and want to marvel in the growth of cinema and the ingenuity and inestimable creativity of those behind cinema’s rise and rise, then you need to watch this extraordinarily clever montage (a full list of the films used can be found after the video).
* Thanks to both Slash Film and First Showing for bring Scott Ewing’s impressive work to my attention.
EVOLUTION of FILM from scott ewing on Vimeo.
FILM CLIPS — USED
1878 – Eadweard J. Muybridge – Pioneer of Motion Photography
1895 – Auguste & Louis Lumière- Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon
1902 – A Trip to the Moon – Viaje a la Luna – Le Voyage dans la lune – Georges Méliès
1920 –The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari
1921 – The Kid – Charlie Chaplin
1922 – NOSFERATU
1923 – Harold Lloyd’s SAFETY LAST!
1924 – Sherlock Junior
1925 – Gold Rush
1926 – The General
1927 – The Jazz Singer
1928 – Steamboat Bill. Jr
1929 – The Broadway Melody
1930 – All Quiet on the Western Front
1931 – Frankenstein
1932 – Horse Feathers
1933 – Duck Soup
1934 – The Man Who Knew Too Much
1935 – Bride of Frankenstein
1936 – Modern Times
1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
1938 – The Adventures of Robin Hood
1939 – The Wizard of Oz
1940 – The Great Dictator
1941 – Citizen Kane
1942 – Casablanca
1943 – Phantom of the Opera
1944 – National Velvet
1945 – The Lost Weekend
1946 – The Best Years of Our Lives
1947 – Out of the Past
1948 – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1949 – The Third Man
1950 – Cinderella
1951 – A Streetcar Named Desire
1952 – Singin’ in the Rain
1953 – Roman Holiday
1954 – Seven Samurai
1955 – Rebel Without a Cause
1956 – The Searchers
1957 – The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958 – Vertigo
1959 – North by Northwest
1960 – The Apartment
1961 – West Side Story
1962 – The Man who shot Liberty Valance
1963 – The Great Escape
1964 – Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
1965 – Thunderball
1966 – The Wild Bunch
1967 – The Graduate
1968 – 2001 A Space Odyssey
1969 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
1970 – The Aristocats
1971 – The French Connection
1972 – Deliverance
1973 – The Exorcist
1974 – Chinatown
1975 – Jaws
1976 – Rocky
1977 – Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1978 – Superman
1979 – Apocalypse Now
1980 – Airplane
1981 – Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982 – E.T: The Extra Terrestrial
1983 – The Right Stuff
1984 – The Karate Kid
1985 – The Goonies
1986 – Top Gun
1987 – The Princess Bride
1988 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1989 – Hoosiers
1990 – Misery
1991 – The Silence of the Lambs
1992 – Reservoir Dogs
1993 – Jurassic Park
1994 – Speed
1995 – Apollo 13
1996 – Mission Impossible
1997 – The Fifth Element
1998 – The Big Lebowski
1999 – The Iron Giant
2000 – Cast Away
2001 – Amelie
2002 – Minority Report
2003 – Kill Bill
2004 – The Incredibles
2005 – Batman Begins
2006 – Children of Men
2007 – No Country For Old Men
2008 – Tropic Thunder
2009 – 500 Days of Summer
2010 – The Social Network
2011 – The Artist
2012 – Skyfall
2013 – Gravity
2014
The Amazing Spiderman 2
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Neighbors
Edge of Tomorrow
Transcendence
Captain America – The Winter Soldier
X-Men: Days of Future Past
22 Jump Street
Godzilla
The Lego Movie
Bad Words
Intersteller
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Maze Runner
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Muppets Most Wanted
Transformers – Age of Extinction
