History of film

Introduction
Early years, 1830–1910
- Origins
- Technical breakthroughs
  - Thomas Edison and the Kinetoscope
  - Lumière brothers and the cinématographe
- Emergence of movies as mass entertainment
- Stylistic innovators
  - George Méliès
  - Edwin S. Porter
- Early growth of the film industry
  - Europe
  - United States
The silent years, 1910–27
- Pre-World War I American cinema
  - Rise of feature films and movie palaces
  - Relocation to Hollywood
- Pre-World War I European cinema
  - France
  - Italy
- Development of narrative film: D.W. Griffith
  - Editing and filming innovations
  - The Birth of a Nation
  - Intolerance and later films
- Post-World War I European cinema
  - Germany
  - The Soviet Union
- Post-World War I American cinema
  - Slapstick comedies: Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd
  - Concerns about morality in film
The pre-World War II sound era
- Introduction of sound
  - Conversion to sound
  - Postsynchronization
  - Nontechnical effects of sound
- Introduction of color
- The Hollywood studio system
- International cinema
  - Great Britain
  - France
  - Germany and Italy
  - Soviet Union
  - Japan
  - India
The war years and post-World War II trends
- Decline of the Hollywood studios
- The fear of communism
- The threat of television
- Cinema around the world
  - Italy
  - France
  - Great Britain
  - Germany
  - Africa
  - Japan
  - China, Taiwan, and Korea
  - India
  - Australia
  - Russia, eastern Europe, and Central Asia
  - Spain and Mexico
  - Sweden
  - United States
    - The youth cult and other trends of the late 1960s
    - The effect of new technologies
Transition to the 21st century
- The expansion of media culture
- Asian cinema
  - China
  - Taiwan
  - Hong Kong
  - Iran
  - Japan
  - South Korea
- European cinema
  - France
  - Great Britain
  - Eastern Europe and Russia
- Australia, New Zealand, and Canada
- Mexico
- United States

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images, Videos & Interactives

Eadweard Muybridge

Text box titled Popularity of movie genres over time, explaining how film genres have risen and fallen in popularity, over a faded background image of a vintage movie set.

Strip Kinetograph movie camera

Watch a motion picture of a sneeze as captured by a strip Kinetograph

Advertisement for the Edison Kinetoscope shows a family watching projected moving pictures in a home setting, with bold headline and descriptive text below.

A black-and-white image of a man trying to climb over a fence while a dog bites his coat, shot in 1890s Chicago.

Still from Le Voyage dans la Lune

At a Glance

The Passion of Joan of Arc

history of film summary

Vitascope — Vitascope Advertisement for Thomas Edison's Vitascope.

History of film

Also known as: history of the motion picture

Written by

Robert SklarAll

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Oct. 28, 2026 •History

History of film, history of cinema, a popular form of mass media, from the 19th century to the present. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) The illusion of films is based on the optical phenomena known as persistence of vision and the phi phenomenon. The first of these causes the brain to retain images cast upon the retina of the eye for a fraction of a second beyond their disappearance from the field...

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