13 Movies You Didn't Know Were Responsible For Weird Cinematic Milestones

3. The Yiddisher Boy Was The First Picture To Feature A Flashback

The movie "flashback" seems like something of a post-modern idea, made popular in the '90s, but who'd have thought that flashbacks were being employed as early as 1909? That's right, silent film The Yiddisher Boy is thought to contain the earliest example of what we'd label today as a flashback. In the film, made by Siegmund Lubin, a character thinks back 25 years in the past to a boyhood street fight to allow audiences to better under his motives - something that was probably fairly confusing for audiences at the time.

What's strange is that the grammar of cinema was already being shaped as early as this, and narrative techniques like flashbacks were being employed - presumably without too much thought - as a way of opening up stories to new and exciting levels. The film only runs at 3 minutes, and is massively difficult to find, but it's worth checking it if you get a chance for the flashback factor alone - it's a milestone, people!