About This Film
Festival Year: 1996
Run Time: 90 Minutes
Film Type: Feature
Animated: No
Countr(ies): USA
English Subtitles: No
Captions: None
Film Overview
Why even waste words on this? Just a roll call of names will be sufficient: Griffith, Pickford, Chaplin, Keaton, Jolson, Kane, Kong, Cagney, Kubrick, Hepburn (both of them), Brando, Bond, Hitchcock, Eastwood, Groucho, Harpo and Chico. Bogart in Rick's Cafe, Vivien Leigh in Tara, Jaet Leigh in the shower, Ernest Borgnine in the diner, Spock on the Enterprise. From early kinetographs of Thomas Edison to the computer-generated dinosaurs of Steven Spielberg, Chuck Workman's delirious paean to Hollywood cinema showers the eye with immortal moments, in what amounts to a feature-length incarnation of his Oscar-winning short “Precious Images,” punctuated with quotes and interviews with Gene Kelly, James Stewart, Lillian Gish, Jackie Cooper, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and more. THE FIRST 100 YEARS is a visual symphony for movie-lovers everywhere that even Bob Dole would approve. Maybe.- Charles Cassady