Early films were derived from Edwardian melodrama. Stuff like ‘Birth of a Nation’ and many of Chaplin’s short films were fairly explicitly political. Things to Come was based on an H.G. Wells novel. Ever read his SF novels? He was a socialist.
Oh, yeah, I know about Wells’ socialism, and I think a bit of it certainly came through in the film. The only reason I guess I can somewhat tolerate the film is due to the far-flung sci-fi and Raymond Massey as the lead (Massey was quite conservative, from what I got from scanning his autobiography at the library one time).
The 10-20-30 melodramas that toured the country alongside vaudeville in the days right before the movie nickelodeons is a topic I’ve always found intriguing, and not too well documented. As for the early films, beyond the common Griffith fare, like the Thomas Ince stuff, along with the serialized “What Happened to Mary” sort of thing, I can’t say I’ve seen that much explicit ideology. I’ve seen quite a few of the Helen Holmes’ “Hazards of Helen” episodes, along with the entire 1916 “Dear Beatrice Fairfax” chapterplay, and beaucoups of related miscellanea. Academics really like to center in on politically-charged (progressive) fare, but in terms of the actual percentage, I find some question in it. It’s like the endless dissertations that talk about Depression-era films like “Wild Boys of the Road” and “Gabriel Over the White House,” and make it sound like they somehow dominated the movie landscape.