Little Billy, the bootblack, finding luck against him, decides to move to some other town. To do this he must walk, as he hasn’t the wherewithal for a railroad ticket. While trudging through the country, he falls into the hands of a couple of sinister-looking tramps, and they at once, by threats, force him to beg for them. A day or so later, the tramps hold up an old man, and while procuring his money throw him down with such force as to unintentionally kill him. Panic-stricken at their awful deed, they feel that the boy’s knowledge of the affair will prove disastrous for them, and so they decide to get rid of him. Through the sagacity of a dog the boy is saved and the tramps are captured.

Had the poor melancholy Dane, Hamlet, lived in this, the twentieth century, he would never have given voice to the remark, "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" No indeed! He would have procured some of the mysterious fluid compounded by an erudite scientist by which things animate and inanimate were rendered non est, for ten minutes at least, by simply spraying them with it. In an atomizer, he sends a quantity, accompanied by a letter, to his brother. In the hope of his putting it on the market. The brother regards it as a joke, and, while toying with the atomizer, accidentally sprays himself. Presto! he is gone, to the amazement of the messenger boy who has carried the package thither. The boy reads the letter, and at once sees the amount of fun he can get out of it, so he nips it.

At the Italian boarding house the male boarders were all smitten with the charms of Minnie, the landlady's pretty daughter, but she was of a poetic turn of mind and her soul soared above plebeianism and her aspirations were romantic. Most persistent among her suitors was Grigo, a coarse Sicilian, whose advances were odiously repulsive. The arrival at the boarding house from the old country of Giuseppe Cassella, the violinist, filled the void in her yearning heart. Romantic, poetic and a talented musician, Giuseppe was indeed a desirable husband for Minnie.

During the American Revolution, a young soldier carrying a crucial message to General Washington is spotted and pursued by a group of enemy soldiers. He takes refuge with a civilian family, but is soon detected. The family and their neighbors must then make plans to see that the important message gets through after all.

This documentary traces the life and work of the legendary "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, silent film star, movie pioneer and keen businesswoman. Pickford's life also parallels an even larger story, telling of the birth of the cinema itself.

A woodcutter says good-bye to his wife and child, and then goes off to work. After he has left, the mother leaves the child outside their cabin to play. Suddenly, an eagle swoops down and carries off the child. When the mother realizes what has happened, she runs to tell her husband. He and the other lumberjacks immediately set out to find and rescue the child.

R: Wallace McCutcheon. K: G.W. Bitzer. D: Mack Sennett, Harry L. Solter, Tony O’Sullivan, Edward Dillon, David Wark Griffith. P: American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. USA 1908
Print: Library of Congress (Paper Print Collection)
“At a political club, the members debate whose bust will replace that of Theodore Roosevelt. Unable to agree, each goes to a sculptor’s studio and bribes him to sculpt a bust of the individual favorite. Instead, the sculptor spends their fees on a dinner with his model during which he becomes so inebriated that he is taken to jail. There he has a nightmare, wherein three busts are created and animated from clay (through stop-motion photography) in the likenesses of Democrat William Jennings Bryan and Republicans Charles W. Fairbanks and William Howard Taft. Finally an animated bust of Roosevelt appears.”
——Library of Congress

这是一套足以让任何一个资深影迷和电影工作者都为之兴奋的产品，它系统地阐述在过去100多年里，电影艺术在欧洲从诞生到发展、壮大、开拓的过程，按照地域的划分系统性地对欧洲主要各国在电影艺术上的发展做了一个梳理。第一集首先就给观众讲述了电影艺术在1895年诞生的过程，由法国卢米埃尔兄弟所拍摄的《火车进站》、《工厂大门》等珍贵片段都被收录其中。第二集讲述的则是瑞典的电影，瑞典作为北欧最为重要的电影艺术发展国家，曾经诞生了伯格曼等著名大导演，但谁又曾想到，他们也经历过电影的低谷。1912年所有瑞典电影人聚集在一起的一次盛会真正让瑞典电影走向了世界的前沿。第三集则来到了法斯宾德、文德斯等的故乡德国，早期的表现主义电影正是从那里诞生而来，成为德国电影的标志之一。新浪潮运动的发源地法国是第四集的主角，它详细介绍了法国电影工业在战争后的复苏与巨大先导性，其中选用了许多耳熟能详的电影片段。第五集则带领我们来到了英国，这个发明出特写镜头和蒙太奇技术的欧洲文化大国却在一战以后开始没落，被其他欧洲国家赶超，但它并没有气馁，一直以其独特的古典意韵在世界电影中独树一帜。在第六集里我们将详细看到有声电影工业对电影发展历史的影响。
本套作品是1996年由专拍电影史纪录片的Kevin Brownlow和Dan Carter合作拍摄的电视系列片，由英国著名影星肯尼斯·布拉纳担任旁白，是电影爱好者入门不可或缺的资料。