CINEMA IS A TIME MACHINE

This time machine does three extraordinary things.

1) It shows us people and places in motion as far back as the 1890s: the streets of New York, Paris, or Cairo; men and women waiting for a train, feeding a baby, or playing cards. The Lumieres and the other pioneers brought a new dimension to the amazing still photography of the nineteenth century.
2) It has made it possible for us to see a person at all stages throughout a long, productive life. The most notable example of this is Lillian Gish. We can see her as a teenager in her first film, Griffith’s An Unseen Enemy (1912). Over a hundred movies later, we can see...