The Kiss (1896)

Directed by

William Heise

Genre

silent film, melodrama, romance film

Country

United States

Runtime

18 min

Rating

5.2 of 10 from 150 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man and a woman share a brief kiss in a reenactment of a stage musical scene. The film is one of the earliest motion pictures shown to the public and lasts only about 18 seconds.

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What happens

The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is an 1896 short film, and was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public. Around 18 seconds long, it depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical The Widow Jones. The film was directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison. The film was produced in April 1896 at the Edison Studios of Edison, the first film studio in the United States. At the time, Edison was working at the Black Maria studios in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1999, the short was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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