Top 4 Best Films of the 1870s

1. Sallie Gardner at a Gallop
Director: Eadweard Muybridge
United States (currently United States of America) | Northern America | North America
1878 | 1870s | 19th Century

Eadweard Muybridge's ""Sallie Gardner at a Gallop"" (1878) invites us for multiple repeated viewings, just as the inventor intended using the zoopraxiscope. The first successful recording of movement is a seminal moment in the history of cinema, whose legacy is unsurpassed to this day.



2. The Magic Rosette [La rosace magique]
Director: Émile Reynaud
France (formerly French Republic) | Western Europe | Europe
1877 | 1870s | 19th Century

In its day, the moving images in Émile Reynaud's ""The Magic Rosette"" (1877) must have felt more exciting than some of the current developments in AI technology. Ground-breaking in form and content, this is one of the few pre-cinema works of art that possess true magic within them.



3. Transit of Venus [Passage de Vénus]
Director: Pierre Janssen
France (formerly French Republic) | Western Europe | Europe
1874 | 1870s | 19th Century

Pierre Janssen allowed the world to gaze at stellar objects for the first time on film in ""Transit of Venus"" (1874). He gave hope that one day images in motion can become part of our quest to understanding the world that we inhabit. The series of photographs set the race for the discovery of cinema.



4. The Musician Monkey [Le singe musicien]
Director: Émile Reynaud
France (formerly French Republic) | Western Europe | Europe
1878 | 1870s | 19th Century

Émile Reynaud's animated work predates the successes in moving photography. ""The Musician Monkey"" (1878) is charming and simultaneously creepy in its visuals, nonetheless through its movement it announced to the world that pictures were no longer still.

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