Cinema, at the turn of the last century, was still about novelty. People wouldn’t ‘go to the movies’, but see short films as part of a fuller evening’s entertainment. In the USA, this was called vaudeville, and would also feature acrobats, singers, dancers, comic monologues and magicians. Houdini learnt his trade in vaudeville.
If films were shown at these, they were usually tells of a group of eccentric individuals fired to the moon by a giant cannon, where they fend off unfriendly locals, who, fortunately, have a habit of exploding when attacked.
