When did people stop calling them 'pictures' and start calling them 'movies'?

When they realized pictures are stationary, and movies are seen in motion. Get it? Move-ies?

They are moving pictures OP.

Whatever the answer is? It's Joan's fault.

I still call them "talkies"

I call them 'films'.

Irish call them 'fillums'.

We had The Last Picture Show and The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the 1970s, so it was still understood at that time what it meant.

When did they stop calling them movies and start calling them films?

Among the professionals in Hollywood it's considered déclassé to call then "movies". They call them "films". Saying "movies" signals you're not in the industry,

[Quote]When did people stop calling them 'pictures'

After the deaths of the "What's My Line" panelists.

They were called moving pictures, motion pictures, or photoplays. From moving pictures we got "movies," but that was considered informal and an Americanism, so an international organization like AMPAS used "motion picture" in their name and titled their competitive category "Best Picture" rather than "Best Movie."

Talkies? Whippersnapper.

In my day, we called 'em flikkers.

About the same time they stopped calling it the silver screen.

“Best Picture” is so ingrained in culture as a phrase on its own that it doesn’t really matter if nobody calls movies “pictures” anymore.

Strangely flick is still a common acceptable term when it is probably the earliest and movies haven't flickered in a hundred years.

I knew a guy in his 30s (back in the late 1990s), from Orange County, CA, who called them "shows" as in "picture show." I found that peculiar for someone his age.

r15, he probably wore dungarees and wanted to make out with you on the davenport.

Shirley MacLaine still calls them pictures. It must have ended with her generation. Probably in the sixties I'd guess they stopped saying it.

Let's take in a show!

No, let's catch a flick.

Shall we go to the movies?

No, let's go to the films.

Are you a movie star?

No, I'm a motion picture headliner.

Do you like movies?

No, I like cinema.

It's the pictures that got small!

Conti never makes a movie, or a picture, or a flick; He makes a film - get it? A film!

History of the "Best Picture" Oscar category's name:

1927/28–1928/29: Academy Award for Outstanding Picture

1929/30–1940: Academy Award for Outstanding Production

1941–1943: Academy Award for Outstanding Motion Picture

1944–1961: Academy Award for Best Motion Picture

1962–present: Academy Award for Best Picture

Here is your word of the day, OP: "etymology."