The Life of an American Fireman (1903)

American director and film pioneer Edwin S. Porter, chief of production at the Edison studio, helped to shift film production toward narrative story telling with such films as this one -- the first realistic (or documentary) film with continuity editing. It featured overlapping action and cross-cut editing, and a last-minute rescue of a mother and child in a burning building (in an interior shot), interspersed with scenes of the firemen responding to the sound of the alarm (a hand pulled the alarm in close-up), descending on a fire pole, and coming to the rescue in a horse-drawn wagon pumper (in exterior shots), heightening suspense.

Mary Jane's Mishap (1903, UK) (aka Don't Fool With Paraffin)

This 4 minute short silent film comedy directed by UK's George Albert Smith (his last film) was composed of a single self-explanatory story of a scullery housewife in her large mostly bare kitchen, although there were two other sets (the rooftop and the cemetery). The entire short was composed of 14 different shots. The complex, fairly-advanced film, one of the first modern films (predating The Great Train Robbery (1903) by a few months), contained many of Smith's cinematic narrative innovations that he had perfected up to this time, including close-ups, parallel action, Melies-style trick photography or special effects (jump-cuts), film editing (of multiple shots), multi-shot camera positioning, and more (two vertical wipe-transitions). The film opened with long or full establishing shots of the kitchen and medium shots of the sluttish, looney, and drunken housewife (Mrs. George A. Smith, or Laura Bayley), who yawned with armed outstretched, and laughably tried to accomplish a few tasks (with winking, comic facial asides toward the camera and audience). She shined a boot with blackened spit-polish (and after wiping her face with the brush in her hand found herself with polish on her upper lip, creating a moustache that she viewed in a mirror), and then carelessly ignited her stove with liquid paraffin - causing a massive, smoky explosion. A stop-motion jump-cut made her seem to disappear, although in an exterior roof-top shot, a "Mary Jane dummy" was blasted up her chimney into the sky, and pieces of her clothing fell all around (suggesting off-screen space). After a vertical wipe-transition (bottom to top), there was a close-up view (an insert shot) of her tombstone that served as an inter-title: Here Lies Mary Jane - Who Lighted the Fire With Paraffin - Rest in Pieces. Another wipe-transition (top to bottom) brought the scene to the graveyard, where a groundsman swept up. A conservative old lady brought three other servant-housemaids to gather around Mary Jane's grave, supposedly as an object lesson - and they were shocked by her ghostly reappearance (a super-imposed or double-exposed effect, called "spirit photography"), and frightened off. Mary Jane searched for her paraffin can and after conjuring it up, returned to her earthly grave, witnessed only by a graveyard cat

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906)

Edwin S. Porter directed this seven-minute fantasy film using trick photography. [The name was based on a Winsor McCay newspaper comic strip of the same name - McCay served as the film's writer.] It was the Edison Manufacturing Company's most popular film of the year. The short tale told of a man (Jack Brawn) who ate a meal of Welsh rarebit along with excessive amounts of alcohol. On his way home while passing a streetlight, reality became surrealistic for him as the alcohol took effect. At his home as he tried to sleep, three little devil characters appeared at the head of his bed, and his bed floated up and out the window and traveled over the city.

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)

Historically and technically, this was the first animated (2D) film short on standard motion-picture film - the first-known attempt at film animation. It was made by newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton, one of the co-founders of the Vitagraph Company. It was the earliest surviving example of an animated film. It was the first cartoon to use the single frame method of stop-motion photography (involving repositioning and rephotographing), and was projected at 20 frames per second.

In the best-known early sequence, a cartoonist's line (or chalk) drawings of the caricaturized faces of a man and a woman were 'animated' (or came to life) on a blackboard. The two faces smiled and winked (and rolled their eyes), and the cigar-smoking man blew a billowing cloud of smoke in the lady's face. When that image was erased, the sideways outline of a portly bowler-hatted gentleman with umbrella was drawn. He twirled his umbrella into the air, and doffed his hat. In the final segment, a circus clown performed tricks with his hat and then with a small poodle dog including having him jump through a hoop.

The Haunted Hotel (1907)

Produced by the American Vitagraph Company and released in the US in 1907, this live-action and stop-motion short film was directed by J. Stuart Blackton. It told about a tired traveler arriving at a hotel, where invisible ghosts performed the various menial tasks. In one astonishing and sensational sequence of animation using three-dimensional objects, a table was set "by invisible hands", wine was poured into a glass, and bread and sausage were sliced - all invisibly - through the trick-magic of stop-motion animation.

Rescued From an Eagle's Nest (1907)

Richard Murphy created a mechanical eagle for this early Edwin S. Porter film (an Edison production with future director D. W. Griffith in his first major screen role) - in the scene, a stuffed eagle with movable wings kidnapped a baby and battled the heroic father.

The "Teddy" Bears (1907)

Edwin Porter directed this short 13-minute film (a variation on the Goldilocks and the three bears story) - it was one of the earliest all stop-motion or stop-frame animation films and took approximately 56 hours to animate just one minute of film. The narrative portion of the film told about how three anthropomorphic bears pursued Goldilocks across snowy terrain until a hunter (a satire on "Teddy" Roosevelt - the nation's President at the time) killed the two larger bears, but captured the third baby bear (based upon a true story about how TR refused to shoot a bear cub). There was also an opening animated sequence of six stuffed 'dancing' teddy bears of varying sizes coming to life.

A Dream of Toyland (1907 or 1908) (aka Dreams of Toyland)

As animation forms continued to be explored, Arthur Melbourne Cooper animated real toys (puppet animation) in this short animation. A young boy dreamed that his toys (cars, teddy bears, policeman, monkey, and horse) came to life to dance, play, chase each other, and fight! Cooper also animated toys in his Noah's Ark (1908 or 1909) and later in The Toymaker's Dream (1913).

The Adventures of Dollie (1908)

This was the first one-reel film directed by D. W. Griffith (in the same year that he started as a director at American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City). It was released and debuted in New York. Griffith would go on to direct 450 one-reel films for Biograph in the next five years, developing many innovative techniques. It told about an idyllic summertime outing of a family with a daughter named Dollie (Gladys Egan), who then faced peril. She was kidnapped by gypsies and placed in a large barrel - which fell into a river (with waterfall) when precariously placed at the back of a wagon.

Fantasmagorie (1908, Fr.)

Emile Cohl's animated short film was considered the first fully animated film. It consisted solely of simple line drawings that blended, transformed or morphed from one image into another; in one early live-action sequence, the animator's hand entered the scene to draw a clown-like stick figure. The dream-like film was created by placing each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then tracing the next drawing - with variations - on top of it until the animator had about 700 drawings, all of which were double-exposed to make the film run longer. The black lines on white paper were printed in negative reverse, making it appear as if the action was on a blackboard.

The Conquest of the Pole (1912, Fr.) (aka À La Conquête du Pôle)

This was one of the last of French filmmaker Georges Melies' output of hundreds of short films, although this one was longer at about 30 minutes. It marked the end of his career as a film-maker, although the film had many special effects. However, by this time, none of them were entirely novel. It was another of his 'trick' films, similar to his earlier landmark A Trip to the Moon (1902) - a trip to the North Pole. It contained the special effect of a large puppet ice-man figure called the Giant of the Snows - in reality, it was a large marionette operated by about a dozen individuals.

Cabiria (1914, It.)

This box-office success was a black/white 180-minute silent epic directed by Giovanni Pastrone. It was a landmark film - an early example of monumental epic film-making with thousands of extras, large sets and spectacular stunts. It laid the pattern and groundwork for future big-budget feature-length films (by the likes of D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille). The film inspired D.W. Griffith to make his own epic Intolerance (1916). Its story of 3rd century BC Ancient Rome included sequences of the eruption of Mt. Etna, and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with elephants (with an early example of tracking shots). The landmark film was shot on location in North Africa, Sicily and the Italian Alps, and reportedly contained the first use of trucking shots (which became known as 'Cabiria' movements).

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

Newspaper cartoonist/animator Winsor McCay created the first major North American animated character - Gertie the Dinosaur. Gertie was originally part of a vaudeville stage show (called a "chalk talk") in early 1914. By late 1914, McCay (self-proclaimed as "America's Greatest Cartoonist") created a theatrical release version of the cartoon that included a "live action" segment that book-ended the cartoon. In the animation, McCay introduced the brontosaurus dinosaur, who then walked out onto the screen. Appearing to 'interact' with Gertie, McCay directed his creation from stage right - telling Gertie to do a little dance, take a bow, and raise her right foot, to the audience's astonishment. Then, McCay 'walked into' the animation by disappearing behind the screen, and then appeared in cartoon form as a 'live action figure' on the screen to ride on the back of the dinosaur into the distance. It was the earliest example of combined 'live action' and animation -- and the first "interactive" animated cartoon. The film's advertisement called it the "Greatest Animal Act in the World".

The Miser's Conversion (1914) (aka The Miser's Reversion)

This was the first film to depict a screen transformation by using a series of dissolves with footage of the character's different stages of makeup, rather than a single jump-cut. This was later used to great effect in many films including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Wolfman (1941). In the film, the title character miser (Sidney Bracey), 75 year-old John Grisley, obsessed with the idea of evolution, acquired a rejuvenation serum that transformed him into a 40 year-old man with just a few drops. To intensify the effect, he drank the entire bottle of serum and reverted into an ape.

Intolerance (1915)

D. W. Griffith's pacifistic epic contained some of the earliest in camera or make-up/special effects - such as the sword beheading of one Babylonian soldier, and the realistic chest-stabbing of another opponent.

The Gulf Between (1917-18)

This film was the first feature-length motion picture in two-strip Technicolor produced in the US. It was also the third feature-length color movie. It is considered a lost film, with only a few frames surviving.

The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)

Early cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay's 12-minute propagandistic, documentary-style The Sinking of the Lusitania, an animation landmark, was the first serious re-enactment of an historical event - the torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, resulting in the loss of almost 2,000 passengers. It was one of the earliest films to utilize cel animation.