American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th Edition

Chapter 22: THE NEW ERA

America in the World

The Cinema

There is probably no cultural or commercial product more closely identified with the United States than motion pictures—or, as they are known in much of the world, the cinema. Although the technology of cinema emerged from the work of inventors in England and France as well as the United States, the production and distribution of films has been dominated by Americans almost from the start. The United States was the first nation to create a film "industry," and it did so at a scale vaster than that of any other country. The 700 feature films a year that Hollywood produced in the 1920s was more than ten times the number created by any other nation, and its films were dominating not only the vast American market, but much of the world's market as well. Seventy percent of the films seen in France, 80 percent of those seen in Latin America, and 95 percent of the movies viewed in Canada and Great Britain were produced in the United States in the 1920s.

As early as the 1930s, the penetration of other nations by American movies was already troubling many governments. The Soviet Union responded to the popularity of Walt Disney's Micky Mouse cartoons by inventing a cartoon hero of its own—a porcupine, designed to entertain in a way consistent with socialist values and not the capitalist ones that they believed Hollywood conveyed. During World War II, American films were banned in occupied France (prompting some anti-fascist dissidents to screen such American films as Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in protest).

American dominance was a result in part of World War I and its aftermath, which debilitated European filmmaking just as movies were vigorously growing in the United States. By 1915, the United States had gained complete control of its own vast market and had so saturated it with movie theaters that by the end of World War I, half the theaters of the world were in America. Two decades later, after an extraordinary expansion of theaters in other nations, the United States continued to have over 40 percent of the world's cinemas. And while the spread of theaters through other areas of the world helped launch film industries in many other countries, it also increased the market (and the appetite) for American films and strengthened American supremacy in their production. "The sun, it now appears," the Saturday Evening Post commented in the mid-1920s, "never sets on the British empire and the American motion picture." Movies were then, and perhaps remain still, America's most influential cultural export. Even American popular music, which has enormous global reach, faces more significant local competition than American movies do in most parts of the world.

Despite this American dominance, however, filmmaking has flourished— and continues to flourish—in many countries around the world. India's fabled "Bollywood," for example, produces an enormous number of movies for its domestic market—almost as many as the American industry creates, even though few of them are widely exported. This global cinema has had a significant impact on American filmmaking, just as American films have influenced filmmakers abroad. The small British film industry had a strong early influence on American movies partly because of the quality and originality of British films, and partly because of the emigration of talented actors, directors, and screenwriters to the United States. The great Alfred Hitchcock, for example, made his first films in London before moving to Hollywood, where he spent the rest of his long career. After World War II, French "new wave" cinema helped spawn a new generation of highly individualistic directors in the United States. Asian cinema—especially the thriving film industry in Hong Kong, with its gritty realism—helped lead to some of the powerfully violent American films of the 1980s and beyond, as well as the genre of martial-arts films that has become popular around the world. German, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese, Australian, and Indian filmmakers also had influence on Hollywood—and over time perhaps even greater influence on the large and growing "independent film" movement in the United States.

In recent decades, as new technologies and new styles have transformed films around the world, the American movie industry has continued to dominate global cinema. But national boundaries no longer adequately describe moviemaking in the twentyfirst century. It is becoming a truly globalized enterprise in the same way that so many other commercial ventures are becoming international. "American" films today are often produced abroad, often have non-American directors and actors, and are often paid for with international financing. Hollywood still dominates worldwide filmmaking, but Hollywood itself is now an increasingly global community.

http://www.filmsite.org/filmh.html Filmsite: Film History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cinema Wikipedia: History of Film

http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Movies_and_Film/History/ Yahoo: Film History Links

http://www.earlycinema.com/index.html Early Cinema.Com

http://www.filmsite.org/afi100films.html AFI: 100 Greatest American Movies

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=REVIEWS08 Ebert: Great Movies

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/papr/mpixhome.html Library of Congress: American Memory Collection Finder

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html American Memory: Inventing Entertainment – The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awlhtml/awlhome.html American Memory: America at Leisure, 1894-1915

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html American Memory: The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/oahtml/oahome.html American Memory: The Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921

http://www.asianfilms.org/ Asian Films Connection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_new_wave Wikipedia: French New Wave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_New_Wave Wikipedia: Hong Kong New Wave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood Wikipedia: Bollywood

1
Look over the film history websites above, particularly that of filmsite.org. Choose a particular decade and discuss the relationship between American and world cinema during that time. What effect did each have on the other? Which was more important at the time? What were the great movies of that particular period?
2
What do you think played a larger role in the eventual commercial supremacy of Hollywood over the world film industry – economic advantages and developments, or the adaptability and universal appeal of American films? Support your answer with specific historical examples.
3
Examine a particular global film movement, such as the French New Wave of the 1960s, the Hong Kong New Wave of the '70s or '80s, or another of your choosing. What were the defining characteristics of the films made in this particular country and era? How did they come to impact American cinema? Can you think of American movies or directors that were particularly influenced by this movement?
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