March of the Movies

• 1933
• 0 hr 45 mins

• Watchlist

Released around the same time as the British film-industry retrospective Flashbacks, was the shorter, and in many ways vastly superior, March of the Movies. The film traces the history of the cinema back to the experiments of such pioneers as Friese-Greene, Lumiere and Edison. It then moves at rapid clip through the Golden Age of silents, concluding with the emergence of the Talkies. Many rare clips are offered in the course of the film's 45 minutes, some culled from productions that no longer exist in their entirety. Particularly instructive are the excerpts of the early talkies, demonstrating the rapid technological strides made in the short space of two years. Not exactly a scholarly treatise, March of the Movies was designed as a crash course in film history for a general audience.