We may be amused now at the disbelief of Kircher’s first audience. But by trying to place ourselves in that hall of the Roman College, three centuries ago, it is easy to realize the difficulties. Nothing like Kircher’s show had ever been presented before. He had chained light and shadow, but the suspicion was held by some of the spectators that there was dark magic about it all and that Kircher had dabbled in the “black arts.”
The first audience congratulated Kircher at the end of the performance, but some went away wondering, dubious. Years later, Kircher wrote in his autobiography, “New accusations piled up and my critics said I should devote my whole life to developing mathematics.”
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Two and a half centuries later, the screen art of magic shadow projection came to life in the motion picture. This was quite a different premiere. But Kircher would have recognized the device as an improvement on and development of his magic lantern. He, and hundreds who came after him, had tried to capture the animation of life in light and shadow pictures. Full success was not possible until a later date because the necessary materials were not available until near the end of the nineteenth century.
The scene of the most significant motion picture premiere was at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, 34th Street, New York, which stood on the site now occupied by the R. H. Macy department store. The time was April 23, 1896. But in contrast to Kircher’s premiere, though “Thomas A. Edison’s Latest Marvel—the Vitascope” had featured billing on the show, it was not the only entertainment on the program. Albert Bial, manager, preceded the showing of the motion pictures with a half-dozen acts of vaudeville. There were the Russian clown, eccentric dancer, athletic and gymnastic comedian, singers and actors and actresses. But the movies stole that show and, in little more than a decade, became staple entertainment in tens of thousands of theatres all over the world.
The special top hat and silk tie audience at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall that Spring evening a half-century ago was treated to a selection of short films which ran only a few moments each: “Sea Waves”, “Umbrella Dance”, “The Barber Shop”, “Burlesque Boxing”, “Monroe Doctrine”, “A Boxing Bout”, “Venice, Showing Gondolas”, “Kaiser Wilhelm, Reviewing His Troops”, “Skirt Dance”, “Butterfly Dance”, “The Bar Room” and “Cuba Libre”.
Thomas Armat, the inventor of the projector which had been built by Edison, supervised projection of those first screen motion pictures shown on Broadway. We can well imagine that Kircher was looking over his shoulder, delighted that his work started 250 years before had been brought to the triumph of the living moving picture.
The great Edison was in a box at the Music Hall that evening and he, too, was glad that the New York audience of first nighters so well received the large screen motion pictures. A few years before, his Kinetograph camera and his Kinetoscope peep-hole viewer had presented motion pictures. But as Kircher in the 17th century wanted his pictures life-size on the screen, so did the public of the Nineties.
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Kircher and Edison do not stand alone in the parade of pioneers in the art and science of the screen. The list of builders of the cinema is as cosmopolitan as its appeal: Greeks, Romans, Persians, British, Italians, Germans, French, Belgians, Austrians and lastly, and in some ways most importantly, Americans. Ancient philosophers, medieval monks, scholarly giants of the Renaissance, scientists, necromancers, modern inventors—all had a role in the 2500 year story of the creation, out of light and shadow, of this most popular and most influential expression—the motion picture.