1910s

DW Griffith's early short films (such as the gangster film The Musketeers Of Pig Alley, 1912) were the first to combine all the new narrative devices, including cross-cutting, multiple camera positions, inter-titles, and close-ups. Griffith can thus be seen as the first 'modern' director, whose greatest achievements were the historical epics The Birth Of A Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916; subtitled A Sun-Play Of The Ages: A Drama Of Comparisons and Love's Struggle Throughout The Ages).

It was, however, the Italian studios that produced the very first epic films, including Quo Vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni, 1913) and the stunning Cabiria: Visione Storica Del Terzo Secolo AC (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914). In contrast to these historical epics was a short-lived cycle of films influenced by the Italian Futurismo art movement, such as Anton Giulio Bragaglia's Thais and Arnaldo Ginna's Vita Futurista (both 1916), directed according to the cinema manifesto published by FT Marinetti in L'Italia Futurista (1916).

Screen comedian Charlie Chaplin emigrated from London to Hollywood. There, he directed and starred in a series of single-reel silent comedies, including The Tramp (1915), which made him the most recognisable film star in the world. Together with DW Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, Chaplin founded the independent studio United Artists in 1919. Pickford and Fairbanks were married, and Fairbanks specialised in swashbuckling roles such as The Mark Of Zorro (Fred Niblo, 1920) which anticipate those of Errol Flynn in the 1930s. United Artists was eventually sold in 1952, and later merged with MGM.

The world-famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt starred in the Elizabethan costume drama Les Amours De La Reine Elisabeth (Louis Mercanton, 1912), one of France's Film D'Art productions. The first example was L'Assassinat Du Duc DeGuise (1908), directed by Andre Calmettes and Charles LeBargy. Films D'Art were significant for their extended running-times, though their static camerawork and stage-like sets were more regressive than innovative. A similar trend existed in Germany, with the popularity of Autorenfilme (literary adaptations), starting with Der Andere (Max Mack, 1912). The Autorenfilme became increasingly elaborate, leading to opulent costume dramas known as Kostumefilme, a trend begun by Joe May's Veritas Vincit (1918) though dominated by Ernst Lubitsch (notably his Mme DuBarry, 1919).

The brief period between 1908 and 1911 was seen as a 'bela epoca' for Brazilian cinema, among the most popular productions being Fitas Cantatas films accompanied by live singers. Similar to Brazil's Fitas Cantatas were the Japanese Rensa-Geki films, in which each sequence would be followed by a short dramatic scene (an innovation first introduced in 1916). Other Japanese genres of the period were: Nonsensu-Mono (comedies), Matatabi-Mono (films about wandering outlaws, such as Hiroshi Inagaki's Tenka Taiheiki from 1928), Bunka Eiga (documentaries, later called Kiroku Eiga), and Jiji Eiga (also documentaries, though specifically jingoistic).

Avant-Garde Cinema

The cinematic avant-garde can be traced back to Abel Gance's short, experimental La Folie Du Dr Tube (1915), and the extraordinary horror masterpiece Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919), the first film of the German Expressionismus movement (though the American avant-garde has much later origins: Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid's Meshes Of The Afternoon from 1943, and Kenneth Anger's Fireworks from 1947). Caligari was a Film D'Art production in all but name, with its painted scenery and static camera, though its angular sets were designed with complete disregard for realism. This resulted in a film which stylistically echoed the unbalanced psychology of its sinister central character and his somnambulistic assistant. The intersection of art and cinema in the 1920s (Impressionisme, Dada, and Surrealism) led to a flowering of the cinematic avant-garde; Iakov Protazanov's Aelita (1924), for example, is the only known film from the Constructivist art movement.