Category:Cinema--1900s

The page: Cinema--1900s, includes (in chronological order) literary works of Cinema, made in the 1900s, or from 1900 to 1909.

• Soldiers of the Cross (1900 Booth, Perry), feature film
• The Passion Play Series (1903 Lubin), feature film
• La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ / 1903 Zecca, Nonguet), feature film
• La naissance, la vie et la mort de N.-S. Jésus-Christ (The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ / 1906 Guy-Blaché), feature film
• Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii / 1908 Maggi, Ambrosio), short film
• The Life of Moses (1909 Blackton), feature film

While the first "biblical" films all focused on the figure of Jesus, in the 1900s the interest expanded to include the life of the first Christians, following the success of novels like "The Last Days of Pompeii", Quo vadis?, and The Sign of the Cross. Subjects like the Wandering Jew, Ben-Hur, Salome and Spartacus offered a glimpse to the Jewish and Greco-Roman backgrounds of the New Testament. Solomon, David and Moses were the first Old Testament characters to attract the attention of filmmakers.

Also from the technical point of view the 1900s saw some major improvement. Following the format of The Horitz Passion Play (1897), Soldiers of the Cross (1900) was a "feature film" only because a series of slides, moving pictures and music were included to accompany and illustrate the preaching of Herbert Booth. In the following years, the first proto-features were produced in the USA and France, by releasing a series of individual (short film) scenes, leaving the exhibitor the option of playing them alone, an incomplete combination of some, or running them all together as a feature film. The American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play (Titled: Lubin's Passion Play) in January 1903 in 31 parts, totaling about 60 minutes. The French company Pathé Frères released a different Passion Play, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, in May 1903 in 32 parts running about 44 minutes.

While following the same episodical format, La naissance, la vie et la mort de N.-S. Jésus-Christ (1906) by Alice Guy-Blaché marked a major shift. It parted from the traditional iconographical approach of the first Jesus movies, following the new Oriental fashion introduced by the work of James Tissot. Orientalism became the distinctive style of all biblical films, including the first feature film on the Hebrew Bible, The Life of Moses (1909) by J. Stuart Blackton, which also was made of a series of five episodes originally released as independent short films.

@2015 Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan

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