Updated June 23, 2023 13.4K votes 2.2K voters 170.6K views
Over 2.2K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Most Important 'Firsts' In Film History
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Vote up the coolest "firsts" in the history of film.
We can trace the history of filmmaking back to the 1890s. Motion pictures were initially considered a novelty, a peep show booth at a fair. Technology in film moved fast, and within 20 years, filmmakers figured out how to edit scenes together to make a comprehensible story and properly light a set. By 1926 motion pictures were already using sound. There are so many cool firsts in film history that are often overlooked.
This film firsts list is not just a technical account of the history of cinema. It's a combination of movie history firsts and cool firsts. When was the first time a cellphone was used? When was virtual reality first introduced on the silver screen? Movies have always been one step ahead of history, breaking down walls and tearing down stereotypes. The first cinematic interracial kiss came in 1957, 10 years before Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial marriage nationwide. Hollywood was sending characters to the moon in 1902, decades before NASA.
Tropes are also on this list of film firsts. What was the first film to use body-swapping as a plotline? You know, like when an uptight father doesn’t understand his son and the son doesn’t get why his dad is such a grump all the time, so they switch places in order to see what it’s like to live in the other person’s shoes. What about the nerdy girl makeover trope? A mousy gal with glasses, a bad haircut, and no sense of style suddenly becomes totally gorgeous with a few makeover tips and contact lenses.
Read about those Hollywood firsts in film and more. Also, make your voice heard. Be sure to vote up the coolest movie history firsts.
Steven Spielberg was only 27 years old when he directed Jaws (1975), and the film totally changed cinema forever. Jaws pretty much invented the concept of the summer blockbuster. During its initial run, the horror movie brought in $260 million, which may not seem like a lot of money for summer films today. However, when adjusted for inflation, Jaws has earned a total of $1,098,916,300. Before Jaws, films were traditionally released only in major markets, then slowly rolled out across the country. Jaws opened nationwide right away and distributors took notice of the massive box office success.
Actors: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
Pixar has made so many great movies. Toy Story (1995) was the very first feature-length animated movie to be made entirely using CGI. The three films in the Toy Story franchise have grossed nearly $2 billion worldwide and a fourth installment is expected in 2018. Pixar's CGI set a very high bar for the animation boom that occurred in the two decades after Toy Story's release.
Actors: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn
The romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934) was the first movie to win "The Big Five" (the five major awards) at the Academy Awards in 1935. Clark Gable won for Best Actor, Claudette Colbert for Best Actress, Frank Capra for Best Director, Robert Riskin for Best Writing, and the film itself won for Best Picture. The only two other films to have achieved this honor were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Actors: Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Alan Hale
It barely resembles the tiny cell phones we're used to, but Danny Glover's character Roger Murtaugh has a cell phone in Lethal Weapon (1987). The two-pound cell known as "the brick" actually became quite popular in the 1980s. You may also remember Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) had one for all his on-the-go financial wheelings and dealings in Wall Street (1987).
Actors: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Mitch Ryan, Tom Atkins
Parents in the 1980s were concerned about the violence in several PG movies of the time, like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. But those movies didn't quite deserve an R rating, either. The MPAA stepped in and found a middle ground in 1984. They created the PG-13 rating, which was first applied to the Cold War teen drama Red Dawn. At the time of its release, Red Dawn was deemed the most violent film ever by the Guinness Book of Records and The National Coalition of Television Violence, due to its 134 acts of violence per hour.
Actors: Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey
Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002)is a historical drama filmed at the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum using one uninterrupted 96-minute Steadicam shot. That means there are no edits, no cuts, and absolutely no room for error. If there were a mistake 95 minutes into the shot, the entire movie had to be filmed again.
Actors: Valery Gergiev, Alexander Sokurov, Sergei Dontsov, Vladimir Baranov, Leonid Mozgovoy
