AHC: Earliest Possible Car Chase in Cinema

FWIG in OTL, the modern car chase came with Bullitt in 1968; so how much earlier could we have seen a scene like this in film, preferably still American film?

What is the most important thing to come first -- a particular type of car suited for the scene? Or is it a photography technique? Or is it an American audience receptive to such an intense aesthetic? Or is it something else?
 
FWIG in OTL, the modern car chase came with Bullitt in 1968; so how much earlier could we have seen a scene like this in film, preferably still American film?

What is the most important thing to come first -- a particular type of car suited for the scene? Or is it a photography technique? Or is it an American audience receptive to such an intense aesthetic? Or is it something else?

Popularity of fast & sportier cars and filming techniques, along with a growing film audience, are the key ingredients, so I would say that the earliest would be the 1950's.

I wonder why It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World isn't considered "first" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Mad,_Mad,_Mad,_Mad_World? (I read that the 1903 film, Runaway Match might possibly contain the first car chase on film).
 
It's not about the car, or even the audience: it's about the director (&, to a lesser extent, screenwriter) wanting or needing a chase. Either it's wanting something flashy & dramatic to boost a film or needing something to fill space in a weak story. (OTL, it's frequently both.:rolleyes:)

As for when the first could be, ask yourself when somebody first said, "Follow that cab." Substitute.
 
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Suppose it could be doable in the 1930s, if one was doing a movie about mobsters or the bank-robbers of the early 1930s like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde, since the Ford flathead V-8 made for the first cheap, fast cars, assuming the technical aspects of cinematography at the time would have been up to it, and the scenes would have gotten past the censors...
 
I think Buster Keaton's "The General" has many elements of a modern day car chase, but of course he did it with trains instead of automobiles.
 
DD951 said:
Suppose it could be doable in the 1930s, if one was doing a movie about mobsters or the bank-robbers
There were what passed for chase scenes even in the '30s.

What was different about "Bullitt" was, it ran long, & dealt realistically (for 1968, anyhow:rolleyes:) with traffic. (More realistic than a lot of later films, with the constant "driving against the flow" & obviously staged "avoidance" by the chasing cars).

As for Hitch, no. He really did suspense well, but chases? This is the man who, in "North by Northwest", staged an attack by a cropduster & had it end with a crash into the most convenient, & unlucky, tanker truck in the history of film.:rolleyes:
 
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