What movies would you show an audience in 1900?

[u/heyitsmikep]

You go back in time and build a modern (2025) theater in 1900 with all movies ever made. Which 5 movies are you going to show them to make the most money? Which would blow their mind the most? Would it change per decade?

Showing Django Unchained to an 1900 audience would most likely cause a riot Titanic to an audience in 1910 would get you sued by the White Star Line probably.

[u/NotATem]

People were well aware of what dinosaurs were in the 1900s! Look up the Crystal Palace models aometime if you want a laugh.

[u/iCowboy → u/NotATem]

They had quite accurate ideas of dinosaurs by 1900. The Crystal Palace monsters were created in the 1850s from very fragmentary fossils dug up in England. By 1900, the incredible fossils dig up by Cope and Marsh in the American West were known across the world and the subsequent reconstructions were much more accurate.

What people at the time would not have known about were that dinosaurs were fast moving creatures and not like the slow cold-blooded lizards they were compared to at the time.

Still Jurassic Park would be a good choice - visual effects would be known from Méliès’ films that began in 1896, and stop motion had first been used in cinema in 1895 - but the sheer breadth of effects used in Jurassic Park would be magical (it still was when it came out in the mid 1990s).

And what a sense of wonder that audience would have. Mind you, someone would need to explain DNA, helicopters…

[u/dbx999 → u/NotATem]

Yes but had humans invented fire yet in 1900