American Film Industry Essay -- Media History, Cinema

The American film industry has become the most dominant over all other national cinemas. Millions of people now watch feature films all over the world but there is, and always has been one prevailing place where the films originate and this is the ‘cinema of the United States of America’ better known as Hollywood. This essay will explain how Hollywood has become the dominant force over all the other national cinemas in relation to historical factors which have affected the high quality of the films, the economic supremacy of Hollywood’s budgets and revenues, aswell as the glamour of high-profile actors and actresses. Through discussing each of these concepts and comparing the success of Hollywood to other national cinemas, in particular British cinema, we can discover how it has become the most dominant cinema in the past to this present day. Before looking into the rise to dominance of Hollywood, we must gain an insight into the history of the cinema industry. The first practices of cinema entertainment was with Thomas Edison’s invention of the kinetoscope in 1896, which gave the audience the chance to view nickelodeons in fairgrounds and later on short films but it wasn’t until 1903 with the ‘Great Train Robbery’ (directed by Edwin Sporter) The pistol shot used in the Great Train Robbery is used in more contemporary films such as James Bond. The audiences started to show interest as now the cinema developed a narrative for the first time with the story shown through a series of various camera shots. It was then that longer movies with more complex story lines and innovative editing were released, and cinema’s possibilities as a form of market as well as entertainment were then recognised. The Motion ... ...gn markets and America’s investments in them could be jeopardized by restricting distribution. The 1948 Anglo-American Film Agreement, allowed American companies to withdraw only a fraction of their huge annual profits, in exchange for the abolition of import quotas. As Balio (1976: p397) points out, the Americans held veiled advantages under the act- ‘American companies could spend there frozen earnings in Britain†¦ to acquire story rights and buy real estate and studios.’ Similar terms could be found in the 1948 Franco-American Film Agreement, where ten million dollars of ‘blocked’ profits could be used to co-produce films with French companies and gain distribution rights. It is through Government collaborations such as this that Hollywood was able to attain the status of an expansive commercial enterprise within the U.S. and indeed outside it that it has today.