The biggest film of the year in 1896 was 47 seconds long.

The Kiss was an Edison Vitascope film featuring a scene from a New York stage comedy entitled The Widow Jones. The actors were May Irwin and John Rice; May Irwin made a previous (uncredited) appearance here on soupgreens.com as the singer to popularize Good-Bye, Booze! when it first appeared in 1901. Similar to Paris Hilton’s sex tape, the kiss in The Widow Jones was the titillating scandal that made May Irwin’s career.