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Yes, the first page is vitally important. It is the place where engagement happens. It is the place where the reader either sinks into the world of the story or skates of the words without engaging. 

It is the place where the character and/or setting either comes to life or remains lifeless. It is the place were the reader either goes, "Oh, interesting" or "Meh, boring."

Tolkien talked about literature creating a "sub-created" world. Either that world starts to open up on the first page or it does not. If it does not, bye bye reader. 

The is not about action or drama, it is about a sense of reality and particularity. If the character or the setting seems artificial, if they seem like just another instance of a mass-produced pattern, then the reader is bored. If they seem real, if they seem particular. If the character seems like a real and particular person, not merely a representative of a type, then the reader feels like they have met someone, and they are engaged and they continue. 

That ability to make a situation of a person seem real and particular is part of the alchemy of writing. While there is surely technique that goes into it, there is something more than technique in it as well. There is vision and there is art. Ask yourself, do you have a person in your head, or a type. Do you have a specific place in your head or only at type. Specificity is essential here. It is what creates the illusion for the reader that they are having an experience. 

The first page initiates the reader into the experience of the people and places of the novel, and either they seem real and particular or they seem forumlaic and generic, and there in the reader is either captured or lost.