10 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Responsible For Game-Changing Innovations

The oldest known film ever made is a short piece titled 'Roundhay Garden Scene'. In it four individuals stand around in a garden, two of them even walk a little. If that sounds boring, just remind yourself that Buried came out in 2010, and that film is just a guy trapped in a box.

Innovations tend to occur in very concentrated bursts, once something is developed it is inevitably improved upon. Film tends to be one of the best ways of recording innovation as, by its nature, it records.

Of course early celluloid was a fragile material: the first 3D film is said to be a movie called The Power Of Love in 1922, but this cannot be definitively confirmed as no surviving copies of the film exist. So although movies lend themselves to explaining their own history there is always the chance there is some lost film out there from the 30s with CGI. Doubtful, but you never know.

The entries included are game changing not just for their technical attributes, but for their progression in the development of storytelling; and although there are hundreds of other films that could justifiably find themselves in a discussion on the works that defined the medium, the ones on this list helped lay the groundwork for film as we know it today: a universally-accepted and startlingly lucrative industry.

1895's L'Arroseur Arrosé, sometimes referred to as The Tables Turned On The Gardener, is the earliest known film comedy. At the time film shorts captured mundane activities like people sneezing or walking out of a factory, but L'Arroseur Arrosé shows an actual intent to tell a story. A very short story, but a story none the less.

The story is a simple one, a simple man needs to accomplish a mission (watering a garden) but is stymied by his foe, who not only attempts to foil our hero's noble goal but also tries to make him a fool of him in the process. The villain in the end is found out and dispatched by the hero. Plot, conflict, resolution.

It's odd looking back and realising the first screen bad guy is a little kid (albeit who is a dick) but it shows a defined jump from a mere presentation of the technology to using film as a means of storytelling.

Although Thomas Edison did make a short of two cats boxing one year earlier, and it is kind of funny, it doesn't really have a scripted plot, as it's just Edison toying with animals (the man used to electrocute elephants too so cruelty to animals is not out of his wheelhouse).