2. Voyage Dans La Lune (1902)
Of all the films in this list, this one has the most relevance to narrative cinema and the modern blockbuster (as well as the modern blockbusters of the previous decades). To put it bluntly, this was one of the first films to set up the very basic rule that cinema could lie, and tell a fictional narrative, however crude it may be. Above all, it singlehandedly invented special effects, and the cut from the moon with no rocket to the rocket sticking out of the moons eye might seem unsophisticated now, but that this was the first film to try anything like this is a stupendous thing indeed. The story behind this film is nearly as interesting as the film itself. Basically, the director George Méliés was recording cars driving down a street in 1896 because thats all films really were in those days. As he was recording, something jammed his camera, and he fiddled with it, got it fixed, and started recording again. Looking back over the footage, he saw that there was a change from before and after the camera got jammed; the cars previously there had changed- what later became known as the stop trick, a basic yet very important technique. This was Méliés great Eureka moment; he had essentially discovered the capability of editing to create a false truth, aka fiction. While his earlier films did similar techniques, this can be seen as one of the first epics, truly exploring the vast capabilities of the ability to lie. It might be relatively basic, and the following year The Great Train Robbery offered up a much more coherent narrative that is more like what were used to today, but this came first, in my view, and manages to tell a fairly good story all of its own. The very fact that Méliés discovery came about by some kind of happy accident makes this film even more of a miracle. The other films on this list, largely, came about through artists experimenting with some kind of purpose or goal in mind, but that this one arose through a mistake with a camera seriously makes one question whether cinema might have gone the same way, had Méliés not decided to film the road on that busy day.