The Lumière Brothers

Our sense of cinema as a site of commercial entertainment can be traced back to the Lumière brothers. In December 1895 they attracted a fee-paying public in Paris to sit and watch flickering images on an illuminated screen. The commercial Pandora's Box opened was to blossom in a few years into a world cinema industry and, at its peak, the fantastical Hollywood. Yet in the 30 years in which this miraculous construction was accomplished, audiences rarely had to listen to films, only watch them. Hence, the early decades of cinema were characterized by the title "silent'. In fact , there was a lot of noise, machinery, audiences, musicians, and commentators. Even so, the absence of the human voice and dialogue make the films seem rather strange when viewed by a modern audience.