What was the first movie shown on a plane?
Ever wondered why getting on a plane can put you in a strange headspace, like you’ve been trapped in a situation you can’t escape, or feel out of sorts in an inexplicable, unsettling way for no apparent reason, like Jodie Foster in Flightplan?
Well, as it turns out, there’s a good reason for this. Beyond the obvious connotations of fear and anxiety that usually come with being hurtled some 35,000 feet into the air, there are real, genuine psychological explanations for why flying can make some of us feel a bit messed up. And mainly, it’s to do with the limited sensory environment and fundamental mood changes that come with having little to keep our minds busy.
One stat that adds some perspective to this comes from Gatwick Airport. In it, researchers found that 15% of men and 6% of women are more likely to cry while watching a film on a flight, compared to if they had watched it at home. Now, considering that in-flight movie selections can be limited, this means that what is making people teary-eyed is likely something short and sweet like Bee Movie, or some kind of trash comedy action movie you’d never expect to hit you in the feels.
Clearly, then, it’s not always about the film itself, but about whatever it is that flying does to our bodies and minds, and how it places us in certain moods we wouldn’t normally fall into. For instance, according to some experts, the pressure, low humidity and oxygen in our blood create a stranger environment than we’re typically accustomed to and can make us feel and think in ways we wouldn’t normally.
What was the first movie shown on a plane?
All of these factors – especially limited oxygen – can also change our ability to think with clarity, making us more susceptible to intense emotional reactions. Couple that with the unease of being strapped into an unfamiliar liminal space, and it’s easy to understand why even the bad movies can cause the most unexpected responses.
Because really, there are genuinely some incredibly bad films on flights; films that you’d probably never choose to watch at home. Somehow, though, we’re more likely to welcome the distraction on a flight, no matter how trivial the story. And while it might not seem like it, airlines do actually put a fair bit of thought into what films are shown, some purposefully choosing those so-bad-they’re-good ones that don’t typically demand too much brain power.
Airlines actually started toying with in-flight entertainment longer ago than people realise, with some appearing as early as the 1920s. The first was technically a promotional film called Howdy Chicago, shown on an Aeromain Airways flight in Chicago. The first Hollywood film, however, was shown on a commercial flight in 1925.
This was the silent monster movie The Lost World, adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel and later paid homage to in Michael Crichton’s sequel to Jurassic Park. A wise choice, considering how its fantastical, adventure elements would’ve no doubt made passengers feel they could escape to some other faraway world. But if for nothing else, it also opened up a world of opportunity for other studios and films to capitalise on an essentially captive audience.
While the modern in-flight entertainment system didn’t properly take flight – pun intended – until the 1960s, such entertainment on board presented a shift towards providing passengers with some sort of distraction. Especially as more people began taking commercial flights and travelling for longer lengths of time, which delivered the perfect opportunity to get stuck into some film they probably wouldn’t have watched at home, and likely won’t revisit, even if it made them cry.
