Early and silent cinema,cinema attractions - Essay Example

The reason for this choice is to show the gradual development of the filmy trends towards modernism. Both the films being silent motion pictures do not have any dialogue. So the actors’ dexterity is the main thing, which made them successful. The Kiss was one of the most popular movies in its genre in the end of the 19th century. This film concentrated more on romance than anything else. It was a challenging job for the director William Heise to make a romantic motion picture where dialogues were not possible to appear.

Released in the year 1896, just as the name shows, this was the first film, which showed an onscreen kissing sequence. There were, however, alternative titles given to this film. They were like “The Mary Irwin Kiss”, “The Rice Irwin Kiss” and “The Widow Jones”. All these titles were mainly used in the United States of America where the connoisseurs appreciated the film. John McNally was a playwright who had an earlier work called “The Widow Jones”. Now this was where the idea of The Kiss was made.

The kissing scene is actually said to be the last of McNally’s drama. This work of art is one of the first vaudeville performances transformed into a film. There was no well-knitted plot in this film as such. All it involved was just a kiss. A couple kisses – and this is where the film starts as well as it ends. Rice and Irwin were two popular stage personalities of the late 19th century and they were the only two people who performed in this movie. Kissing on the screen was something, which raised a great hue and cry wherever it was released.

Moreover, some viewers were also excited to see a couple kissing on each other’s lip as this was perhaps the first erotic approach made in the world of motion pictures. There were even some controversies regarding the sequence as it was taken to be pornographic as ‘kissing’ was made public. (Heise, 2008) Voyage à travers limpossible, Le on the other hand, was a film which involved