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Friday, August 11, 2006

First Feature Length Film

Another fact from "The Guinness Book of Film Facts and Feats". The 1912 film From the Manger to the Cross is often cited as (one of) the first feature film(s) ever made. Here (p.17) it lists the earliest feature films made in the US, and From the Manger ranks fourth, with Oliver Twist being released in 7 months earlier in June 1912.

But it appears that both of those films were well beaten to the tile of first ever feature length film by a 1906 Australian Film about Ned Kelly, The Story of the Kelly Gang. Also ahead of the From the Manger is the 1909 French film L'Enfant Prodigue (which sounds like another bible based film and was the first European feature length film). Interestingly, there's no mention at all of The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, which some have also claimed was the first feature length film.

2 comments:

  1. This time I want to speak about
    the scene visualiations of this
    film with James Tissot's Bible
    ilustrations. As far as I know,
    the moment when John the Baptist
    says "Behold the lamb of God" is
    same made by Tissot and same made
    by Olcott, the director of the
    film.The same situation is with
    the nailing on the cross.In Tissot's bible Jesus in tied on
    his chest and nailed, and on the
    movie he's only tied on his hands.

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