Cinema, at the turn of the last century, was still about novelty. People wouldn’t ‘go to the movies’, but see short films as part of a fuller evening’s entertainment. In the USA, this was called vaudeville, and would also feature acrobats, singers, dancers, comic monologues and magicians. Houdini learnt his trade in vaudeville.
If films were shown at these, they were usually less than five minutes long. Most were recordings of actual events, taken by a static camera in one shot, though some told simple stories. Across the Atlantic, more pioneering work was done, especially by the Frenchman Georges Méliès. His whimsical, theatrical The Trip to the Moon tells of a group of eccentric individuals fired to the moon by a giant cannon, where they fend off unfriendly locals, who,…
