The World of the Movies

The motion pictures, or movies, as they are usually called in the United States, are just a little over seventy years old. They have grown to be the most popular and widespread form of entertainment in the world. People who have never seen a play on the stage, who have never attended a concert or opera, even people who never read a book have seen and enjoyed the movies. In the early part of the century, some years after the American inventor Thomas E. Edison made the first "animated picture," motion pictures were very crude.

Soon, directors and producers decided to make longer films that told longer and better stories, and they begin to demand better acting. Among pioneers in movie-making was David Mark Griffity, an American director, whose most popular film was a three-hour story about the American Civil War.

In the 1920s, the talkies came. Movies had found voice and talk became a part of the film. Since the development of the talkies, there have been many other advances in film making and showing. One of these is the addition of colors. Color was added to sound, so that trees which were black in the old films became green, girls' lips became red, and the sky and water became blue. There are a number of technical of film advances that followed since then.