The American film, also known as Hollywood, has had a major impact on the film industry since the 20th Century. Classic Hollywood films are America’s dominant films style. This film was developed from 1913 to 1950, and it is still the most common in American films. Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumiere are usually credited for the birth of modern films. However, American films quickly emerged as a dominant force in this new industry. It is the home of more than 700 English-language films every year and produces the highest number of films of any single language national films. Although the films are produced in the same languages by national films across the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, they are not considered part of Hollywood. Hollywood has been considered a transnational film studio. Many titles were produced in multiple languages, most often in Spanish and French. The production of contemporary Hollywood movies is often outsourced to Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.
Hollywood is known as the oldest film industry in that it was the home of the first production companies and film studios. It is also home to many films genres, such as comedy, drama, action, and romance.
Eadweard Muybridge showed the power of photography in capturing motion in 1878. New York City hosted the first-ever commercial motion picture exhibit in 1894. This was made possible by Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope. Over the next decades, silent film production exploded. Studio formations arose and moved to California. The films and stories that they told were much longer. The Jazz Singer, the first sync-sound musical film globally, was made in the United States in 1927. The USA also led the development of sound-film technology over the subsequent decades. The U.S. movie industry has largely been located in and around Los Angeles’ thirty-mile area since the early 20th Century. The development of film grammar was a key part of the work done by D.W. Griffith. Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) has been frequently cited as the greatest film in critic’s polls.
The biggest film studios in Hollywood are the main source of the highest-grossing and best-selling movies around the globe. Hollywood’s most successful movies have also generated moreticket sales and box office revenue than films made elsewhere.
Today, American movie studios generate hundreds of movies annually. The United States is a major innovator in motion picture engineering technology and one of the most prolific film producers worldwide.
Hollywood Producer Phoenix Melville – Santa Monica Beach Los Angeles June 2021
Origin of Hollywood film
Edward Muybridge took a series of photographs of a horse running and recorded the first instance of motion-capturing photographs. He captured the scene in Palo Alto (California) using a series of still cameras arranged in a row. Inventors all over the world were inspired by Muybridge’s feat to create similar devices. Thomas Edison, an American inventor, was the first to create a kinetoscope.
The origins of American films can be traced back to the East Coast. Fort Lee in New Jersey wasonce the capital of motion pictures. Thomas Edison’s Black Maria, the first motion picture studio in West Orange (New Jersey) at the end 19th Century, started the industry. These cities and towns along the Hudson River and Hudson Palisades were able to offer land for a fraction of the cost of New York City. The phenomenal growth in the film industry during the first half of the20th Century greatly benefited them.
This industry attracted both capital and a creative workforce. The Kalem Company started filming at Fort Lee in 1907. Other filmmakers soon followed. The Champion Film Company builtits first studio in 1909. This company was a precursor to Universal Studios. Others followed suitand built or leased Fort Lee studios. Film companies such as Independent Film Company and The Solax Company, Eclair Studios and Goldwyn Picture Corporation, American Melies, Star Films, World Film Company, Biograph Studios, and Fox Film Corporation, Pathe Freres (Metro Pictures Corporation), Victor Film Company, Selznick Pictures The Corporation photographed Fort Lee between 1910 and 1920. Mary Pickford was one of the first to work in a biography studio.
The Kaufman Astoria Studios, Queens in New York, was built during the silent film era. W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers used it. In the Bronx was the Edison Studios. Chelsea, Manhattan,was also a frequent location. Other Eastern cities such as Chicago and Cleveland were also used frequently to produce films. California was quickly becoming a key film production hub in the West. Colorado was the home of Art-O-Graf, a film company based in Denver. Walt Disney’s early Laugh-O-Gram animation center was headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Picture City, Florida, was planned as a location for a movie production center. The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane destroyed the plan, and Picture City was renamed Hobe Sound. The attempt to create a Detroit film production center also failed.
Film patents wars in the early 20th Century were instrumental in facilitating the expansion of filmcompanies outside of New York. Many filmmakers used equipment they didn’t own. Filming in New York can be dangerous because it is close to Edison’s headquarters and the agents who tried to hijack the camera. Because of its favorable year-round climate, many major film companies had established production facilities in Southern California around Los Angeles by 1912.
Rise of Hollywood Films
The Biograph Company sent director D. W. Griffith to the west coast in early 1910 with his acting troupe. This included actors Blanche Sweet and Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, and Lionel Barrymore. The filming began on a vacant lot in Los Angeles near Georgia Street. The companythen decided to travel further north to Hollywood to film in a small village that was welcoming and friendly. Griffith then shot In Old California, the first movie ever made in Hollywood. This biograph melodrama was about California in 19th century Mexico. Griffith spent several months there and made many films before returning home to New York. Selig Polyscope of Chicago also established the first film studio for the industry in Los Angeles in 1910. Many moviemakers fled Hollywood in 1913 to escape the fees imposed on Thomas Edison by moviemakers who had patents on the process of making movies. They heard about Griffith’s success in Hollywood and decided to move west. Nestor Studios, Bayonne, New Jersey, built the first studio in Hollywood in 1911. David and William Horsley owned Nestor Studios. Later,Universal Studios merged with them. William Horsley’s other company Hollywood Film Laboratory is the oldest in Hollywood. It is now known as the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. California’s more welcoming and cost-effective environment led to almost all filmmaking moving to the West Coast in the 1930s. Thomas Edison was the owner of almost all patents related to motion picture production at the time. Edison and his agents often sued movie producers on East Coast who acted without Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company. Edison could forbid them from suing or stopping them, while Edison could control moviemakers on the West Coast.
Hollywood and the studios grew in Los Angeles. Films were originally made in many American cities before World War I. However, filmmakers began to gravitate towards southern Californiaas the industry developed. The warm climate and consistent sunlight attracted them to the area. This made it possible for them to film all year outdoors. They also enjoyed the variety of sceneryavailable. The decline of Europe’s once-dominant film industry led to the rise of the United States. There were still a lot of infrastructures. Los Angeles’s earlier response to the 1918 flu epidemic was more effective than other American cities. This helped to reduce the number of cases and allowed for a quicker recovery. Hollywood has also gained greater prominence overNew York City. Public health officials closed some movie theaters in certain areas, while large studios stopped production for several weeks. Some actors also fell ill during the pandemic. Although this caused severe financial problems for small studios and major financial losses, the industry overall more than recovered in the Roaring 20s.
There are many starting points for films. However, Griffith’s 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation was a landmark in filming that established the global filming vocabulary that dominates celluloid.
Many Jewish immigrants were employed in Hollywood’s film industry during the early 20th Century when the medium was still new. After paying a nickel for their admission, they were able to make their mark in a new business: the display of short films in small theaters called nickelodeons. In a matter of years, many ambitious men such as William Fox, Adolph Zukor, and Carl Laemmle had transitioned to the production part of the business. They were soon the leaders of a new type of business: the movie studio. They set the scene for the industry’s internationalism. The industry is often accused of Amerocentric provincialism.
After World War I, other moviemakers came from Europe: director Ernst Lubitsch and Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir, and actors Rudolph Valentino and Marlene Dietrich and Ronald Colman. After introducing the sound film, they were lured west by a large supply of local actors to create one of the most significant growth industries of the 20th Century. The studios produced 400 movies per year during the height of motion pictures’ popularity in the mid-1940s. This was seen by a population of 90 million Americans each week.
Classic Hollywood films and Hollywood’s films Golden Age
The Golden Age of Hollywood films and classic Hollywood films can be described as American films’s technical and narrative style from 1913 to 1969. Hollywood studios issued thousands of movies. The Classical style emerged in 1913. It was accelerated in 1917 when the U.S. entered World War I. The film The Jazz Singer was finally released in 1927. This movie ended the age of silent movies.
Hollywood movies were based on a certain formula – Westerns, Slapstick Comedy, Musicals, Animated Cartoons, Biographical Films – and many of the same creative teams worked on the same films by the same studio. Cedric Gibbons, Herbert Stothart, and Alfred Newman all worked on MGM films. Cecil B. also worked for 20th Century Fox for twenty years. Almost all of Demir’s films were shot in Paramount. Henry King’s films, however, were made mainly for 20th Century Fox.
One could also guess which studio made what film because of the actors that appeared in them. MGM claimed, for instance, that it had “more stars than there were in heaven.” Each studio had its style and distinctive touches that made it possible to identify which studio made what film is rare today.
To Have and Have Not (1944), for example, is well-known not only because of the first pairingof Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) and Lauren Bacall (1924-1914) but also because it was written and edited by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), who was the author of the novel upon which the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897-1962), the screen adapter.
Warner Bros. was able to achieve great success after The Jazz Singer was released in 1927. They purchased Stanley Theaters and First National Productions, both in 1928. Since its formation in 1924, MGM also owned the Loews theatres, while the Fox Film Corporation owned and operated the Fox Theatre.RKO (the merger of Keith Orpheum Theatres, Radio Corporation of America, and Radio Corporation of America in 1928) also responded to Western Electric/ERPI’s monopoly on movie sound. They developed the Photophone method to add sound to films.
Paramount, which had already acquired Balaban and Katz back in 1926, would respond to Warner Bros. and RKO by buying several theaters in the late 1920s and monopolizing theatersin Detroit, Michigan. The Big Five studios MGM, Paramount Pictures, and RKO owned almost all the first-run theaters in major cities across the United States by 1930.
Hollywood Film Studios
The Count of Monte Cristo in 1908 was the first Hollywood film. Its production began in Chicago. The In Old California short film, first made in Hollywood in 1910, was the first to be entirely shot in Hollywood.
Sunset Boulevard became the home of the first movie theater in 1911. Many of the most important motion-picture firms had moved to Hollywood, California, from the East Coast by 1915.
Hollywood was a perfect place to film movies as filmmakers couldn’t be sued for infringing Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company’s motion picture film patents. It was blessed with a variety of terrain and warm sunshine, making it ideal for film backgrounds.
The studio system
Movie-making was still a business, and companies that operated under the studio system made money. The major studios paid many people salaries: actors, producers and directors, writers, stunt performers, artisans, technicians, and craft persons. To shoot westerns and other genre films, they owned or leased Movie Ranches located in Southern California. In 1920, the major studios controlled hundreds of films across the country. These theaters showed their films and were constantly in need of new material.
After government threats of censorship increased by 1930, Will Hays, President of MPPDA, created the Hays (Production) Code. It followed censorship guidelines. The code was not enforced until 1934 after The Legion of Decency, a Catholic watchdog group, was appalled atsome provocative movies and lurid advertisements of the pre-Code Hollywood era. They threatened to boycott all motion pictures if the code did not become effective. Films that the Production Code Administration did not approve were subject to a $25,000 penalty and were not allowed to profit from theaters. The MPPDA had control over every theater in the country via the Big Five studios.
MGM was the dominant film studio throughout the 1930s and most of the golden age. They had the highest-ranking stars in Hollywood and were also responsible for creating the Hollywood star system. MGM’s stars include Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, and Gene Raymond. Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and Lionel Barrymore were just a few. MGM was not the only company.
Walt Disney’s animation studio was another great accomplishment of American film in this era. The most successful film of all time was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which Disney produced in 1937. This distinction was quickly surpassed in 1939 by Selznick International, which created Gone with the Wind, which is still the most successful film in inflation-adjusted terms.
Many film historians have noted the great cinematography that resulted from this period of meticulous filmmaking. Because so many films were made, not everyone had to be a hit. One studio could risk on a low-budget film with a strong script and unknown actors. Citizen Kane (1915-1985), which Orson Welles directed, is often considered the greatest film ever.
The fall of the studio system (the late 1940s)
Two forces emerged in the late 1940s that destroyed the studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood. Federal antitrust enforcement that distinguished the production and exhibition of films; and the advent of television.
Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1938 during a series of poor films from the major studios, quickly rose to the top spot and became the highest-grossing film ever made. The studios were embarrassed to learn that an independent animated film was not produced with any studio-employed stars. This led to widespread dismay at block-booking, where studios sold a year’s worth of films to theaters at once and used the lock-in to pay for inferior quality releases.
Thurman Arnold, the noted “trust buster”, was the assistant attorney general and initiated proceedings against eight of the largest Hollywood studios for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in July 1938. Five of the eight studios settled with Arnold in October 1940 and signed a consent decree agreeing that they would comply within three years.
Block-booking short film subjects are eliminated. Trade-showing is a better alternative to blind buying. Under this system, 31 theater districts will watch movies every two weeks before being shown in theaters. To enforce these regulations, create an administration board in every theater district.
The “Little Three, ” the consent decree, was not signed by the “Little Three,” who didn’t own any theaters. Independent film producers were not happy with the compromise. They formed a unioncalled the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers. They sued Paramount for their monopoly over the Detroit Theaters. This was because Paramount was also gaining control through the actors Betty Hutton and Betty Goddard. The Consent of Decree did not apply to theBig Five studios during WWII. There were no major consequences. Nevertheless, Paramount and the Little Three studios were named defendants in the Hollywood antitrust lawsuit after the war.
The Sherman Antitrust Act was found to violate the Supreme Court’s decision that major studios owned theaters and distribution rights. The studios started to release technical staff and actors from their contracts with them. The major Hollywood studios could have a completely different cast and creative team, which changed the way they made films.
This decision led to the gradual loss in recognition of the features that made Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Studios films instantly identifiable. Cecil B. DeMille was one of those movie stars who remained contract artists through the end of his career or continued to work with the same creative team on their films. This made it so that DeMille films looked the same regardless of whether they were made in 1956 or 1932.
Film History of Hollywood from 1900 to 1950
How Hollywood’s films 50 Years Made American History the list is given below in the form:
The birth of Hollywood (1910-1919)
Hollywood legend says that Cecil B DeMille’s 1914 film, The Squaw Man was the first movie made in Los Angeles. Director Cecil B DeMille decided to not descend in snowbound Flagstaff,Arizona but to Los Angeles. The prolific DW Griffith had already made his way west four years before to enjoy the California sun. In Old California, a 17-minute adventure set in Spanish colonial times was the first film to be shot in Hollywood. It is now commemorated by a monument on 1713 Vine Street. This Hollywood film was released on March 10, 1910.
Griffith directed two of the most iconic American films, The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Intolerance (1916). Charlie Chaplin’s two-reel comedy sketches made Griffith’s tramp persona famous within six years. The pair, along with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, had formedtheir own company, United Artists.
Hollywood had already become synonymous with American film’s burgeoning glamour. Griffith moved to New York that year. Griffith returned to California a decade later to find the city transformed and to his surprise, was a Victorian anachronism.
The Best Film of 1916 Intolerance
The four stories are cleverly intertwined, from ancient Babylon to today’s social oppression stories are Intolerance. Griffith was instrumental in the creation of the grammar of film. He created the film grammar through the vile Birth of a Nation and the stunning Intolerance. This allowed America to catch up to Europe’s cinematic achievements.
The birth of sound in Hollywood films (1920-1929)
After the first world conflict, a small business was started by Jewish immigrants who were semi-literate. The industry was then shaped by a handful of studios that made and distributed films. They also had international offices. The movie colony developed a reputation for extravagant lifestyles and conspicuous drinking. However, threats of strict censorship coming from antisemiticorganizations were kept at bay when Will Hays was appointed head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.
Hollywood lured some of Europe’s finest talents. The silent film genre was being refined in comedy by Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd. Also, the psychological dramas of Erich von Stroheim (and King Vidor) were created. Louis B Mayer created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and its Oscars to increase the business and fight unionization. Two earthquakes struck Hollywood. The first was caused by Warner Brothers’ accidental introduction speech in The Jazz Singer (1927). Silent movies were quickly transferred to archives and art house collections.The industry faced enormous bills for soundproofing studios and re-equipping films. The Wall Street crash in 1929, which threatened bankruptcy, saw the studios handed over to the bankers.
The Gold Rush is Charlie Chaplin’s best film of 1925
Chaplin was the most popular man on the globe when his tramp, a balletic farceur, admired Nijinsky equally, and Einstein sought to make his fortune in Yukon with this feature-length comedy. This film, though simple in its technicality and inventiveness, balances laughter with sadness. The cabin fever sequence is unparalleled. Chaplin was perhaps the only moviemaker who could challenge the arrival of sound.
The Times of Technicolor (1930-1939)
Hollywood’s greatest decade began in the 1960s with the advertising slogan, “Garbo talks!” Sound pictures brought Tinseltown an influx of new writers. These included wisecracking newspaper journalists to William Faulkner. The 1934 adoption of the Hays Office Production Code led to a new level of honesty in plots and dialogues. It also sparked a 30 year-long war between filmmakers (censors) and producers.
Double bills and more expensive tickets confronted the Depression. This was met with sharp social criticism and escapism. The New Deal split the industry politically. The moguls moved to one side, while the actors, writers, directors, and other directors moved to another. In 1934, industry leaders joined forces to defeat Upton Sinclair, a socialist who ran for governor of California. They developed various visual and dramatic styles.
Under this system, 31 theater districts watch movies every two weeks before they are shown in theaters. Disney went from producing short programs to making a feature-length film about Snow White. The decade reached its peak when Technicolor emerged; it was the best year of Hollywood’s history. Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Gone with the Wind, was among the top hits.
The best film is the Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
MGM’s magic transformed Dorothy’s story into a musical that moved beyond the Depression years and into a Technicolor future. Its songs became an iconic hit, and Judy Garland was made a star.
The Films go to the war (1940-1949).
Since the Hollywood industry is a metaphor for capitalism and the United States, the Hollywoodnovel of 1941 is based on “What Makes Sammy Run?” Author: Budd Schulberg “What is Sammy Run doing?” asked Scott Fitzgerald’s last tycoon. Hollywood was ready for war in the year 2000. Stars, directors, and technicians have joined the army. Those remaining sold war bonds and were featured in propagandist entertainments. Two new genres emerged – the patriotic movie demonizing Japs & Germans and dark thriller (later dubbed film noir), both heavily influenced in part by brilliant refugees from Nazi Germany who were skilled in expressionism. Hollywood enjoyed enormous public approval and huge box-office profits, despite losing important foreign markets. Then came peace. The Iron Curtain (1948), an anti-communist picture, was used to attack the enemy externally. However, studio bosses demandedsubmission from an internal enemy: anti-communist witch hunters. This was most famously knownas the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). The Hollywood 10 writers and directors were known as the “Hollywood 10”, but they refused to reveal their political affiliations. They were sentenced to jail for contemptuous of Congress.
Hollywood Ten
Paranoia about communism increased in Hollywood and the United States during the Cold War. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a House of Representatives panel that looked into possible communist ties, began investigating communism in films in 1947. At least 40 people from the movie industry were called as witnesses.
Ten screenwriters and directors were known as the Hollywood Ten. They challenged the legalityof HUAC’s actions. They claimed the investigation violated civil rights. However, their efforts backfired when the HUAC’s actions were contemptuous of Congress, and they were fined and finally jailed.
Edward Dmytryk was one of the ten. Later, he chose to cooperate and identify 20 of his peers as having possible communist ties.
Dmytryk and all other members of the Hollywood Ten who were suspected of supporting communism were removed from the blacklist and denied work after the scandal. The shameful list included hundreds of actors, musicians and writers, producers, and directors, such as Orson Welles (Lena Horne), Charlie Chaplin, Lloyd Bridges, and Burl Ives (Burl Ives), and Anne Revere.
The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler, 1946 is the most famous film in Hollywood
This story of war, peace, and reconciliation was created during the small window of opportunity between the Second World War (and the onset of the cold war). It is about three servicemen adapting to civilian life in a typical American town. Although perhaps less bold than it once was, this Hollywood prestige filmmaking masterpiece is a great example of Hollywood prestige filmmaking.
The battle with TV (1950)
1950 saw the start of the Korean Cold War. HUAC put more pressure on the industry. A blacklist that was arbitrarily created drove many left-wing actors out of Hollywood to work elsewhere or make scripts available for sale to other artists. This atmosphere of fear, suspicion, cowardice (which is reflected in High Noon) was made worse by the rise of TV and anti-monopoly legislation, which caused the big studios and others to close their film chains. The industry fought back, with bigger screens (Cinerama CinemaScope VistaVision, VistaVision) a 3-D format, a temporary novelty. Also, blockbusters such as DeMille’s The Ten Commandments were replaced by cheap quickies for teenagers. Elvis Presley was considered a national menace and was brought to Hollywood. He was domesticated and sent off for military service. After his return, he was welcomed back as a national treasure. In the end, the movie industry began to embrace television and stop boycotting it.
High Noon (1950, Fred Zinnemann) – Best film
The western was a popular genre for adults in the anxious years after World War II. This very stripped-down allegory attacked McCarthyism at Hollywood and the nation as a whole in a way that encouraged liberals and fell below conservative barriers. John Wayne loathed it and later appeared as Rio Bravo in a right-wing response.
Hays Code
1948 was the Supreme Court’s ruling that movie studios could no longer own films that showedtheir films. This was the end of the Golden Age Hollywood. This ruling forced the Big Five film owners to close down their theaters and make more careful selections about which films they made.
The Hays Code, an informal set of rules for movie censorship, was also binding upon movie studios. Even though it wasn’t a big issue in the 1950s and 1960s, it strained their hand even as the audience grew more liberal.
Film attendance dropped as television popularity increased in the 1950s. Foreign movie studiosdemonstrated that they could easily grab some of Hollywood’s glory in the 1960s by releasing movies like Zulu, Lawrence of Arabia, and James Bond.
The advent of tabloid magazines saw many Hollywood stars being exposed for scandalous behavior. It was a blow to their image and lifted them off their high pedestals.
Conclusion
It has been easy to confuse the American commercial movie industry with Hollywood. This is shorthand that hides a complex network, institutions, practices, and conventions. This network has seen dramatic changes over the last seven decades. Since the early 1950s, Hollywood has been the subject of the obituary written by commentators. Tinseltown has been prematurely declared dead by the advent of television and its shift to independent and runaway production,layoffs and shrinking studio lots, and the incorporation of movie studios into larger conglomerates. Hollywood has not disappeared but has developed; it is an industry, image, and physical place. However, Hollywood is a very different reality than sixty-five years ago. Hollywood is now the headquarters of the giant media conglomerates that own the film entertainment divisions. However, the production process itself is distributed over a wide range of countries and specialist service providers within the United States.
Phoenix Melville is a British-French director, writer and artist.
