The Kiss

It was around this time that movie making was just getting started. Reels were short and most movies were less than a minute long. Typically they showed everyday scenes: a train pulling into a station, people walking on a busy street. Thomas Edison had started to experiment with movies and had made great progress with his first Kinetoscope cameras. In the early summer of 1896 Edison asked May Irwin and John C. Rice if they would perform their kissing scene for the camera and they agreed. To this day, many film directories title this short piece of film as The Widow Jones because of the play the scene was taken from, but to almost everyone, it is simply known as The Kiss. And what an uproar it caused. It shocked movie patrons, caused newspapers to editorialize and preachers to preach about the deterioration of moral values. The Kiss, by the way, is thought to be the first movie ever shown in Canada when it was projected onto a makeshift screen in West End Park, Ottawa, on July 21 of that year.

http://www.northernstars.ca/actorsghi/irwinbio.html