The Cinema Arrives

On December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers held the first commercial film screening at the Grand Café on Boulevard des Capucines. This modest beginning launched entertainment's greatest revolution. Within a decade, Paris had hundreds of cinemas ranging from converted shops to purpose-built picture palaces.

Early films—trains arriving, workers leaving factories, babies eating—fascinated through sheer novelty of movement captured. But filmmakers quickly discovered narrative possibilities. Georges Méliès, a magician turned director, created fantastical stories using innovative special effects. His "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) demonstrated cinema's ability to visualize impossible dreams.

Cinema democratized entertainment radically. For a few centimes, anyone could watch the same films shown in elegant theaters. The moving pictures required no literacy, no cultural education, no language comprehension. Immigrants, children, and the illiterate found equal access to this new medium.

Women played crucial early cinema roles. Alice Guy-Blaché directed hundreds of films for Gaumont studios, pioneering narrative techniques. The actress Max Linder developed comic persona that influenced Chaplin. Women comprised the majority of early audiences, finding in dark cinemas freedom from social supervision.

Yet cinema also threatened established entertainment. Music hall performers worried about unemployment. Theater owners feared competition. The Catholic Church condemned dark rooms where men and women sat together. The police struggled to regulate this new medium—should films be censored like plays? Did cinema halls require licenses like cabarets?