HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

Table of contents:
Abstract………………………………………………………....4
Introduction…………………………………………………......5

Chapter I. The Early Cinema

I.1Origins…………………………………………………….....6
I.2 Early Cinema in the U.S.A……………………………….....7
I.3 The development of film……...………………………........8

Chapter II. The Golden Age of Hollywood

II.1 The Classical Hollywood……………………………….... .9
II.2 The Studio System……………………………………..….10
II.3 Decline of Studio System…………………………..……...11

Chapter III. The ’New Hollywood’

III.1 The ‘New Hollywood’……………………………….........13
III.2 Case study: Scarface .........................................................15

Chapter IV . Blockbusters & Independent films

IV.1 Blockbusters………………………………………............16
IV.2 Independent films………………………………………....17
IV.3 Case study: Reservoir Dogs ……………………….........19

Chapter V. Hollywood, cable television, and videotape……….20

Conclusion……………………………………………………...23
Bibliography…………………………………………………....24

Annexes………………………………………………………...25

2
 Abstract

The main reason for choosing this topic-Hollywood Cinema- is because I am a

film enthusiast and an admirer of the American cinema.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the history of the
Hollywood cinema ,considering its most significant stages.

During the past half-century American movies have become a major industry a
new art growing out of science and the older arts, and a powerful social agency
peculiar to modern times. Born in the laboratory, organized as a medium of
expression, exploited for the entertainment of the masses, the motion picture has
developed through the co-operation of scientist, artist, and business man. Each has
contributed to the rise of the film, shaping its character and strengthening its
effectiveness.

3
 Introduction

Hundreds of motion pictures are made each year, tons of news print commend
them, millions of people see them. And there in a sense the whole thing comes to
an end: the films disappear from sight, leaving behind little more than the wholly
incalculable effect they have had on their multitudinous audiences. Astronomical
numbers of tears have been shed, pulses have quickened, unrealized associations
have been set up, but a medium that bears so transient an appearance does not
readily enjoy respect or provoke reflection, since it is about as difficult to compare
one dream with another as to measure film against film in recollection.

The liveliest and most popular art of the twentieth century, however, deserves
better than this. Politics and history itself are ephemeral, but are not ill-considered
or neglected for that reason, and for that matter the motion picture is by no means
an inconsiderable element in contemporary society. More than this, in a most
curious and striking way the film actually reflects contemporary history as it flows.

The cinema of the United States has had a profound effect on cinema across the
world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four
main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood,
and the contemporary period (after 1980). Since the 1920s, the American film
industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country.

4
Chapter I. Early Cinema

I.1 Origins

The years 1896-1903 saw the genesis of the movie. At first a minor commercial
commodity, the motion picture groped toward a larger future a broad business base, a
technique of its own, and a mass audience.
When film emerged in 1895 as a new form of communication, there was little idea of
what its future might hold. It was unclear how it might be used, what its purpose
should be and how people would react to it. In effect, film production was an
experiment. Audiences were certainly amazed by the new phenomenon but
film-makers wondered how long its novelty value would last. We now know, of
course, that film has become a global industry. Cinema is a central part of our lives
and over time a range of conventions have developed for making films.
Inventions are rarely realized in isolation. Developments in the recording and
projection of moving images were being pursued in several countries at the same time,
but just as important were the inventions that pre-dated cinema. The means to view
moving images had been developed by 1834 by William Horner with the zoetrope, but
the images were a series of drawings which mimicked the various stages of motion of
a moving object, typically someone running. The ability to produce images that
recorded the natural world had been realised in 1827 by Joseph Niepce with the
invention of photography. Cinema was the result of bringing together techniques for
showing moving images and the technology of recording aspects of the real world.
Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer, known primarily for his
important pioneering work on animal locomotion, with use of multiple cameras to
capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that
pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip that is used today.
In 1893 Thomas Edison had unveiled his Kinetoscope moving image system, as
developed by W.K.L. Dickson. Edison is also believed to have built the first film
studio (called the 'Black Maria'), with sections in the roof to let in light and with the
whole building revolving in order to be able to follow the sun. Edison's method of
screening films only catered for individual viewers, though, and as such was not a
projection system. Other equipment designs were developed in 1896 in Britain and the
United States, but it is Auguste and Louis Lumiere who are regarded as having

5
produced the first widely used successful camera and projection system in 1895, the
cinematographs.
It is also the Lumiere brothers who are usually credited with having made the first
films in 1895 and with having held the first public screening on 28 December of that
year, at the Grand Cafe in Paris. In fact Max Skladanovsky had screened a film on 1
November of the same year in Germany, but his contribution to developing film
technology is often forgotten; his camera/projection system was cumbersome and
impractical and developed no further, leaving the Lumieres to perfect their system.
Other camera and projection designs had also been experimented with in other
countries around the same time.

The first cinema was opened in France in 1897 by the Lumiere Brothers, while the
first US cinema did not open until 1902. Early cinemas were basic, often consisting of
nothing more than a screen, a projector, a piano and several rows of chairs. Initial
doubts about the viability of public screenings of films soon disappeared and by 1905
the United States had approximately 1,000 cinemas, a figure which had risen to 5,000
by 1908. The industry continued to expand and by 1910 weekly cinema attendances
numbered 26 million, a figure which almost doubled over the next five years to reach
49 million by 1915. Cinema building continued apace, led by entrepreneurs such as
S.L. Rothafel.
Cinemas in the UK were similarly basic and initially had little more than rows of
benches surrounding a primitive projector. The Cinematograph Act of 1909 changed
this with its requirements of fireproofing and separation of the projection box from the
auditorium and the installation of fire exits and toilets. The worst halls closed down
and many theatres were converted into cinemas, with 3,500 in existence in the UK by
1915. However, many cinemas closed down during the First World War.

I.2 Early Cinema in the U.S.A

In the USA prior to 1905, films tended to be shown wherever facilities existed for
entertaining the general public: thus theatres, music halls, vaudeville houses and even
funfairs were regularly used. It was common for vaudeville shows to begin and end
with short films, but this practice was soon reversed in cinemas where it became
common for a vaudeville act to perform while reels were being changed. By 1905
purpose-built venues had become the norm, and these early exhibition theatres were
referred to as nickelodeons rather than cinemas, the cost of admission typically being
a nickel. Nickelodeons were relatively small and had minimal facilities; they provided
cheap entertainment and were well suited to their audience, which tended to be
working class. Films provided popular entertainment just as music halls and circuses
had done previously, while classical concerts and plays at the theatre tended to be
more expensive and remained a middle-class leisure activity.

6
I.3 The development of film

Film form changed dramatically between 1895 and 1915. The beginnings of cinema
were marked by simple narratives and primitive film techniques. Initially little
importance was attached to camerawork and editing; the emphasis was on mise en
scene. Particular films have been recognized as indicating major steps in the
development of film techniques, but, as with film technology, it is important to
remember that new techniques were being explored by many different film-makers in
many different countries.

The earliest films were very much the creations of the camera operators, who were
usually also the director and scriptwriter. However, the emphasis gradually changed
over the years as control shifted from the camera operator to the director and/or the
producer. Filmmaking was from the outset very much a male-dominated profession,
with the notable exception of Alice Guy from France, who was making films by 1896.
Also from France, and best known for their early work, were the Lumiere brothers and
Georges Melies. Their productions were radically different, though, with the Lumieres
tending towards non-fiction films whereas Melies concentrated on fiction.

Early cinema had no conventions; it was all about experimentation. Once the obvious
visual possibilities of film had been recognized, some film-makers began to realize the
further potential of the medium. The emphasis on recording the real world gradually
gave way to attempts at creating the impossible on film. Melies was a professional
magician and was already skilled in creating illusions. As noted above, Melies used
stop motion, using editing to create a kind of jump cut in which elements within a shot
suddenly change position, appear, or disappear. In addition, film-makers experimented
with running film backwards, with speeding up and slowing down time and with
multiple exposures, which involved running the film through the camera more than
once to superimpose different images on top of each other. Melies himself used
multiple exposures to brilliant effect in his 1900 film The One Man Orchestra. A man
walks on stage to play an instrument and then the same man walks on seven times to
play seven different instruments, at which point the orchestra is complete.

Two films that neatly sum up the results of the evolution of film form between 1895
and 1915 are Chaplin's The Tramp and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, both made
in 1915. Griffith brought together and refined the techniques that had been developing
since 1895. The use of camera and editing not only provided a clear narrative but

7
also managed to involve the viewer emotionally. Variety of shot size and of camera
angle were employed throughout with effective use of cross-cutting, the principles of
continuity editing were applied to ensure narrative coherence.

Chapter II. Golden Age of Hollywood

II.1 The Classical Hollywood

Hollywood's position as the film capital of the world was made possible partly by the
advent of the First World War in 1914. The war temporarily destroyed European
competition, particularly in France and Italy. For the next four years Hollywood
dominated the film world, establishing an impressive global distribution network. It
has been estimated that in 1914 Hollywood produced 50 per cent of the world's films;
by 1918 it produced nearly all of them.

During the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the
silent era in American cinema in the late 1920s to the late 1950s, thousands of movies
were issued from the Hollywood studios. The start of the Golden Age was arguably
when The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the silent era and increasing box-
office profits for films as sound was introduced to feature films. Most Hollywood
pictures adhered closely to a formula - Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated
cartoon, biopic (biographical picture) - and the same creative teams often worked on
films made by the same studio. For example, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart
always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for
twenty years, Cecil B. De Mille's films were almost all made at Paramount, and
director Henry King's films were mostly made for 20th Century Fox. At the same
time, one could usually guess which studio made which film, largely because of the
actors who appeared in it; MGM, for example, claimed it had contracted "more stars
than there are in heaven." Each studio had its own style and characteristic touches
which made it possible to know this — a trait that does not exist today. Yet each
movie was a little different, and, unlike the craftsmen who made cars, many of the
people who made movies were artists. For example, To Have and Have Not (1944) is
famous not only for the first pairing of actors Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) and
Lauren Bacall (1924–) but also for being written by two future winners of the Nobel
Prize in Literature: Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), the author of the novel on which
the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who worked on
the screen adaptation.

After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Bros. gained huge success and
was able to acquire their own string of movie theaters, after purchasing Stanley
Theaters and First National Productions in 1928. MGM had also owned the Loews

8
string of theaters since forming in 1924, and the Fox Film Corporation owned the Fox
Theatre strings as well. Also, RKO (a 1928 merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters
and the Radio Corporation of America) responded to the Western Electric/ERPI
monopoly over sound in films , and developed their own method, known as
Photophone, to put sound in films.

Paramount, who already acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the
success of Warner Bros. and RKO, and buy a number of theaters in the late 1920s as
well, and would hold a monopoly on theaters in Detroit, Michigan. By the 1930s, all
of America's theaters were owned by the Big Five studios - MGM, Paramount
Pictures, RKO, Warner Bros., and 20th Century Fox..

II.2 The Studio System

Movie-making was still a business however, and motion picture companies made
money by operating under the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of
people on salary — actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, craftspersons, and
technicians. And they owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across the
nation, theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material.
In 1930, MPDAA President Will Hays created the Hays (Production) Code, which
followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of
censorship expanded by 1930. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after
the Catholic watchdog organization The Legion of Decency - appalled by Mae West's
very successful sexual appearances in She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel -
threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it didn't go into effect. Those films that
didn't obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a
$25,000.00 fine and could not profit in the theaters, as the MPDDA owned every
theater in the country through the Big Five studios .

Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the film
screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the
Hollywood star system altogether. Some MGM stars included "King of Hollywood"
Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Jeanette
MacDonald and husband Gene Raymond, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, and Gene
Kelly. Another great achievement of US cinema during this era came through Walt
Disney's animation company. In 1937, Disney created the most successful film of its
time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Also in 1939, MGM would create what is
still, when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time, Gone with the
Wind .

Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that
emerged from this period of highly regimented film-making. One reason this was

9
possible is that, with so many movies being made, not every one had to be a big hit. A
studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively
unknown actors.

Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles (1915-1985) and often regarded as the greatest
film of all time, fits that description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like
Howard Hawks (1896-1977), Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) and Frank Capra (1897-
1991) battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the
studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as
The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,
Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings, Ninotchka, and Midnight. Among the
other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics:
Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, the original King Kong,
Mutiny on the Bounty, City Lights, Red River and Top Hat.

II.3 D E C L I N E O F T H E S T U D I O S Y S T E M

The studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that
developed in the late 1940s: a federal antitrust action that separated the production of
films from their exhibition; and the advent of television.

In 1938, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released during a run of
lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest-grossing film
released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently-
produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked
already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking, in which studios
would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at a time to theaters and use the lock-
in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. Assistant Attorney General Thurman
Arnold—a noted "trust buster" of the Roosevelt administration — took this
opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July
1938 for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The federal suit resulted in five of
the eight studios (the "Big Five": Warner Bros., MGM, Fox, RKO and Paramount)
reaching a compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree
agreeing to, within three years:

• Eliminate the block-booking of short film subjects, in an arrangement known as

"one shot", or "full force" block-booking.
• Eliminate the block-booking of any more than five features in their theaters.
• No longer engage in blind buying (or the buying of films by theater districts
without seeing films beforehand) and instead have trade-showing, in which all
31 theater districts in US would see films every two weeks before showing
movies in theaters.

10
 • Set up an administration board in each theater district to enforce these
requirements.

The "Little Three" (Universal Studios, United Artists, and Columbia Pictures), who
did not own any theaters, refused to participate in the consent decree. A number of
independent film producers were also unhappy with the compromise and formed a
union known as the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and sued
Paramount for the monopoly they still had over the Detroit Theaters — as Paramount
was also gaining dominance through actors like Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard,
Veronica Lake, Betty Hutton, crooner Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, and longtime actor for
studio Gary Cooper too- by 1942.

The Big Five studios didn't meet the requirements of the Consent of Decree during
WWII, without major consequence, but after the war ended they joined Paramount as
defendants in the Hollywood anti-trust case, as did the Little Three studios also. The
Supreme Court eventually ruled that the major studios ownership of theaters and film
distribution was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. As a result, the studios
began to release actors and technical staff from their contracts with the studios. This
changed the paradigm of film making by the major Hollywood studios, as each could
have an entirely different cast and creative team. This resulted in the gradual loss of
the characteristics which made MGM, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, RKO, and
Fox films immediately identifiable. But certain movie people, such as Cecil B.
DeMille, either remained contract artists till the end of their careers or used the same
creative teams on their films, so that a DeMille film still looked like one whether it
was made in 1932 or 1956. Also, the number of movies being produced annually
dropped as the average budget soared, marking a major change in strategy for the
industry. Studios now aimed to produce entertainment that could not be offered by
television: spectacular, larger-than-life productions. Studios also began to sell portions
of their theatrical film libraries to other companies to sell to television. By 1949, all
major film studios had given up ownership of their theaters.

Television was also instrumental in the decline of Hollywood's Golden Age as it broke
the movie industry's hegemony in American entertainment. Despite this, the film
industry was also able to gain some leverage for future films as longtime government
censorship faded in the 1950s. After the Paramount anti-trust case ended, Hollywood
movie studios no longer owned theaters, and thus made it so foreign films could be
released in American theaters without censorship.

11
Chapter III.The ’New Hollywood’

III.1 The ‘New Hollywood’

In contrast to the 'classical' film form of the studio era, films that came out of post-
1948 Hollywood did not always follow mainstream film techniques. While classical
conventions were and are still in evidence, greater individuality and creativity on the
part of the director, together with an increased willingness to incorporate European art
cinema, led to the appearance of more 'alternative' films.

Following the Paramount Case and the advent of television, both of which severely
weakened the traditional studio system, Hollywood studios initially used spectacle to
retain profitability. Technicolor became used far more frequently, and widescreen
processes and technical improvements, such as Cinemascope, stereo sound and others
such as 3-D, were invented in order to retain the dwindling audience and compete with
television, but were generally not successful in increasing profits.

The 1950s and early 60s saw a Hollywood dominated by musicals, historical epics,
and other films that benefited from the larger screens, wider framing and improved
sound. However, audience share continued to dwindle, and by the mid-1960s had
reaching alarmingly low levels. Several costly flops, including Cleopatra and Hello,
Dolly!, and failed attempts to imitate the success of The Sound of Music, put great
strain on the studios.

By the time the baby boomer generation was coming of age in the 1960s, 'Old
Hollywood' was rapidly losing money; the studios were unsure how to react to the
much changed audience demographics. The marked change during the period was
from a middle aged high school educated audience in the mid 60s, to a younger,
college-educated, more affluent one; by the mid 70s, 76% of all movie-goers were
under 30, and 64% had gone to college.European art films (especially the Commedia
all'italiana, the French New Wave, and the Spaghetti Western) and Japanese cinema
were making a splash in America — the huge market of disaffected youth seemed to
find relevance and artisic meaning in movies like Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup,
with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity.The desperation felt
by studios during this period of economic downturn, and after the losses from
expensive movie flops, led to innovation and risk taking through allowing greater
control by younger directors and producers. Therefore, in an attempt to capture that
audience which found a connection to the “art films” of Europe, the Studios hired a

12
host of young filmmakers (many of whom were mentored by Roger Corman) and
allowed them to make their films with relatively little studio control. This, together
with the breakdown of the Production Code in 1966 and the new ratings system in
1968 (reflecting growing market segmentation) set the scene for New Hollywood.

A new generation of directors was emerging whose styles had been shaped by
influences very different from those of the studio system. Many of these new directors
had been through film schools and had encountered alternatives to Hollywood.
Directors such as Coppola,Scorsese, Lucas and Spielberg were labelled the 'movie
brats' because of the way they challenged established Hollywood directors and film
styles. However, this initial challenge soon came to be seen as Hollywood's saviour. A
number of the 'movie brats' films of the 1960s (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde,
Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider) embodied alternative and 'art' techniques. These films
were relatively low budget but were very popular with teenage audiences because of
the issues covered, the styles used and the frequent use of contemporary music. The
studio was no longer responsible for the style of a film.
'New Hollywood' is a term used to describe the emergence of a new generation of film
school-trained directors who had absorbed the techniques developed in Europe in the
1960s; The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde marked the beginning of American cinema
rebounding as well, as a new generation of films would afterwards gain success at the
box offices as well. Filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Brian de
Palma, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin and Steven Spielberg came to produce fare
that paid homage to the history of film, and developed upon existing genres and
techniques. In the early 1970s, their films were often both critically acclaimed and
commercially successful.

While the early New Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider had
been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased sexuality and
violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas with The
Godfather, Jaws, and Star Wars, respectively helped to give rise to the modern
"blockbuster", and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce
enormous hits.
In retrospect, Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) marked the beginning of the end for
the New Hollywood. With their unprecedented box-office successes, Steven
Spielberg's and George Lucas's films jumpstarted Hollywood's blockbuster mentality,
giving studios a new paradigm of how to make money in the changing commercial
landscape. The focus on high-concept premises, with greater concentration on tie-in
merchandise (such as toys), spin-offs into other media (such as soundtracks), and the
use of sequels (which had been made more respectable by Coppola's The Godfather
Part II), all showed the studios how to make money in the new environment.

13
'Post-classical cinema' is a term used to describe the changing methods of storytelling
in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and
characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period:
chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature "twist endings", and lines
between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The roots of post-classical
storytelling may be seen in film noir, in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in
Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho.

III.2 Case study: Scarface

Scarface is a 1983 epic crime drama film directed by Brian De Palma, written by
Oliver Stone, and starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana. Based on Howard Hawks'
original 1932 film of the same name, the film tells the story of a fictional Cuban
refugee who comes to Florida in 1980 as a result of the Mariel Boatlift. Montana
becomes a gangster against the backdrop of the 1980s cocaine boom. The film
chronicles his rise to the top of Miami's criminal underworld and subsequent
downfall in tragic Greek fashion.

The film is dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht, who were the writers of
the original 1932 film.

The initial critical response to Scarface was mixed at best, with the film receiving
criticism for its violence and graphic language. The film has since gathered a cult
following and has become an important cultural icon, inspiring posters, clothing,
and many other references. The film's grainy black and white poster is a popular
decoration and is still in production; as a result of its popularity it has been
parodied many times.

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten Top Ten"—the best ten
films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from
the creative community. Scarface was acknowledged as the tenth best in the
gangster film genre. The line "Say hello to my little friend!" (said by Montana of
his rifle-grenade-launcher) took 61st place on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes
list. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #8 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult
Films", and Empire Magazine placed it among the top 500 films of all time.

14
Chapter IV . Blockbusters & Independent films
The drive to produce a spectacle on the movie screen has largely shaped American
cinema ever since. Spectacular epics which took advantage of new widescreen
processes had been increasingly popular from the 1950s onwards. Since then,
American films have become increasingly divided into two categories: Blockbusters
and independent films.

IV.1 Blockbusters

Studios have focused on relying on a handful of extremely expensive releases every

year in order to remain profitable. Such blockbusters emphasize spectacle, star power,
and high production value, all of which entail an enormous budget. Blockbusters
typically rely upon star power and massive advertising to attract a huge audience. A
successful blockbuster will attract an audience large enough to offset production costs
and reap considerable profits. Such productions carry a substantial risk of failure, and
most studios release blockbusters that both over- and underperform in a year.

Before Jaws set box office records in the summer of 1975, successful films such as
Gone with the Wind and Ben-Hur were called blockbusters based purely on their box
office, but Jaws is regarded as the first film of the so-called 'blockbuster era' with its
current meaning, implying a type of film. It also consolidated the 'summer blockbuster'
trend, through which studios and distributors planned their entire annual marketing
strategy around a big release by July 4.

Jaws exceeded $100,000,000 in ticket sales and for a time this was the point at which
a film could be designated a blockbuster in North America. However earlier films such
as Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Sound of Music (1965) easily passed this
threshold.

After the success of Jaws, many Hollywood producers attempted to create similar
"event films" with wide commercial appeal. Film companies began green lighting
increasingly high budgeted films and relying extensively on massive advertising
blitzes leading up to their theatrical release. Spielberg and director/producer George
Lucas (whose 1977 film Star Wars was the most successful film of that decade) are
the film-makers most closely associated with the beginning of the blockbuster era.

Although 'blockbusters' were initially created by the audience, after a while the term
came to mean a high-budget production aimed at mass markets, with associated
merchandising, on which the financial fortunes of film studio or distributor depended.

15
It was defined by its production budget and marketing effort rather than its success and
popularity, and was essentially a tag which a film's marketing gave itself. In this way it
became possible to refer to films such as Hollywood's Godzilla (1998) or Last Action
Hero as both a blockbuster and a box office disaster.

Eventually, the focus on creating blockbusters grew so intense that a backlash

occurred, with critics and some film-makers decrying the prevalence of a "blockbuster
mentality" and lamenting the dearth of the author-driven, 'more artistic' small-scale
films of the New Hollywood era. This view is taken, for example, by film journalist
Peter Biskind, who wrote that all studios wanted was another Jaws, and as production
costs rose, they were less willing to take risks and therefore based blockbusters on the
'lowest common denominators' of the mass market. An opposing view is taken by film
critic Tom Shone, who considers that Lucas and Spielberg's reinvention of
blockbusters as fast-paced entertainment reinvigorated the US film industry and
deserves greater artistic and critical recognition.

IV.2 Independent films

Studios supplement these movies with independent productions, made with small
budgets and often independently of the studio corporation. Movies made in this
manner typically emphasize high professional quality in terms of acting, directing,
screenwriting, and other elements associated with production, and also upon creativity
and innovation. These movies usually rely upon critical praise or niche marketing to
garner an audience. Because of an independent film's low budgets, a successful
independent film can have a high profit-to-cost ratio, while a failure will incur
minimal losses, allowing for studios to sponsor dozens of such productions in addition
to their high-stakes releases.

American independent cinema was revitalized in the late 1980s and early 1990s when
another new generation of moviemakers, including Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh,
Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino made movies like, respectively: Do the Right
Thing; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Clerks; and Reservoir Dogs. In terms of directing,
screenwriting, editing, and other elements, these movies were innovative and often
irreverent, playing with and contradicting the conventions of Hollywood movies.
Furthermore, their considerable financial successes and crossover into popular culture
reestablished the commercial viability of independent film. Since then, the
independent film industry has become more clearly defined and more influential in
American cinema. Many of the major studios have capitalized on this by developing
subsidiaries to produce similar films; for example Fox Searchlight Pictures.

To a lesser degree in the 2000s, film types that were previously considered to have
only a minor presence in the mainstream movie market began to arise as more potent

16
American box office draws. These include foreign-language films such as Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero and documentary films such as Super Size Me,
March of the Penguins, and Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit
9/11.

The independent film scene's development in the 1990s and 2000s has been stimulated
by a range of factors, including the development of affordable digital cinematography
cameras that can rival 35 mm film quality and easy-to-use computer editing software.

Until the advent of digital alternatives, the cost of professional film equipment and
stock was a major obstacle to independent filmmakers who wanted to make their own
films. The cost of 35 mm film is steadily rising: in 2002 alone, film negative costs
were up 23%, according to Variety. Studio-quality filming typically required
expensive lighting and post-production facilities.

But the advent of consumer camcorders in 1985, and more importantly, the arrival of
high-definition digital video in the early 1990s, have since lowered the technology
barrier to movie production considerably. Both production and post-production costs
have been significantly lowered; today, the hardware and software for post-production
can be installed in a commodity-based personal computer. Technologies such as DVD,
FireWire connections and professional-level non-linear editing system software make
movie-making relatively inexpensive.

Director Francis Ford Coppola, long an advocate of new technologies like non-linear
editing and digital cameras, said in 2007 that "cinema is escaping being controlled by
the financier, and that's a wonderful thing. You don't have to go hat-in-hand to some
film distributor and say, 'Please will you let me make a movie?'"

The increasing popularity and feasibility of low-budget films over the last 15 years has
led to a vast increase in the number of aspiring filmmakers — people who have
written spec scripts and who hope to find several million dollars to turn that script into
a successful independent film like Reservoir Dogs, Little Miss Sunshine, or Juno.
Aspiring filmmakers often work day-jobs while they pitch their scripts to independent
film production companies, talent agents, and wealthy investors. Their dreams are
much more attainable than they were before the independent film revolution because
gaining the backing of a major studio is no longer needed in order for aspiring
filmmakers to potentially access millions of dollars to make their film.

17
IV.3 Case study: Reservoir Dogs
Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 crime film and the debut of director and writer Quentin
Tarantino. It incorporates many of the themes and aesthetics that have become
Tarantino's hallmarks: violent crime, pop culture references, memorable dialogue
and nonlinear stories.The film depicts the events before and after a botched
diamond heist, though not the heist itself. Reservoir Dogs stars an ensemble cast
with Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, and
Lawrence Tierney. Tarantino has a minor role, as does criminal-turned-author
Eddie Bunker. It incorporates many themes and aesthetics that have become
Tarantino's hallmarks: violent crime, pop culture references, memorable dialogue,
profuse profanity, and a nonlinear storyline.

The film has become a classic of independent film and a cult hit.[2] It was named
"Greatest Independent Film of all Time" by Empire. Reservoir Dogs was generally
well received and the cast was praised by many critics. Although it was never given
much promotion upon release, the film was a modest success by grossing
$2,832,029, which made its budget back. However, it did become a major hit in the
United Kingdom; grossing nearly £6.5 million, and it achieved higher popularity
after the success of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. It is often criticized for its high degree
of violence and profanity, and audience members reportedly walked out during the
film's now notorious torture scene.

Reservoir Dogs itself inspired many similar films in the 1990s, often low-budget
independent films. Movies often cited as examples include Destiny Turns on the
Radio (which featured Tarantino), Suicide Kings, Thursday, 2 Days in the Valley,
Killing Zoe (Tarantino was the executive producer), S.F.W. and Mad Dog Time.
Reservoir Dogs is influenced by numerous films, particularly Hong Kong action
cinema, French New Wave, the heist film and Samuel Fuller.

18
19
Chapter V.Hollywood,cable television and videotape

In many respects, Hollywood after the 1970s ran a long grooves laid down in previous
decades. The major companies- Warner Bros .,Columbia, Paramount, Twentieth
Century Fox, Universal , MGM/UA, Disney-held power by controlling distribution .
Television production was their bread and butter, but feature films were still the high-
stakes side of the business, where tens of millions could be made or lost in a week . In
order to have twelve to twenty movies to distribute, each Major might acquire films in
a finished or nearly finished state (the negative pickup), originate films themselves, or
fund a package assembled by an independent producer or talent agent.
These business routines were profoundly affected by two new moving-image
technologies. The first was cable and satellite television, which emerged in the late
1970s and increased the number of channels available to the viewer. Studios began
selling rights to recent films to HBO, Showtime, and other cable channels .Cable
showings became another window, following in-flight airline screenings and
preceding network playoffs . Cable firms also began financing productions and buying
rights before a film was made.A second new technology increased the viewer’s
choices many times over. Japan’s Sony corporation began marketing the Betamax
home videocassette recorder in 1976, and Matsushita introduced its Video Home
System (VHS ) soon after.
Sales took off in the early 1980s, and by 1988 most U.S. households, nearly 60 million
,had a VCR.At first Hollywood was suspicious of the videocassette .If people could
tape movies from television ,wouldn’t they stay home instead of going out to see new
movies?Worse, if videotapes were sold or rented, wouldn’t people just wait until the
newest movie was available more cheaply than in theaters?

20
 Thus, in 1976, MCA and Disney sued to stop the sale of VCRs on the grounds that
taping infringed copyright laws. While the case was winding through the courts
(where it ended in a victory for the VCR makers ) , it became clear that videotape did
not hu rt U.S theatrical attendance. Just as sales of films to broadcast television
proved a n unexpected blessing in the 1950s and 1 960s, so movies on tape became
another way for studios to earn still more money. Studios established divisions to
make and distribute cassettes. Sales to rental stores, particularly the growing national
chains , proved very lucrative. Although a few “budget theaters” might play a film
after its initial run , cable showings and cassette rental generally took the place of the
theatrical second run . In addition , video enhanced the value of the studios‘ libraries,
so that old films could be reissued on tape . The studios woke up and found
themselves in a new era, called by one historian “the ancillary eighties. “ The Majors
also discovered that many viewers would buy video copies. Between 1982 and 1983 ,
Paramount began offering selected titles at $40, half the normal price .Sales were
brisk. Top Gun was the theatrical hit of 1986 , and the sale of videocassettes a year
later brought in an astonishing $40 million in the first week, nearly half of what the
film had earned in its entire theatrical run. Sell-through tapes yielded much fatter
returns to the studios than did rentals .
By 1987, over half of major film companies’ domestic revenues were flowing from
videocassette rentals and sales. Soon video income was twice that yielded by theatrical
releases. Since even an average film could count on several million dollars from video
sales, there was a burst of independent and low-budget releases. Although the big
studio pictures garnered the bulk of theatrical revenues, the independents could do
reasonably well on income from cable, satellite, and videocassette markets. In the
mid- 1990s, as stores were glutted with more than enough titles to fill demand , the
video market slowed down and rental chains began to suffer losses.At the end of the
decade, however, prospects brightened thanks to another innovation, the DVD( Digital
Video Disc, or Digital Versatile Disc) . With VCR sales dwindling, perhaps a new
technology could spur fresh cycles of consumption .To coax people into buying
payers,the format had to guarantee higher picture and sound quality than VHS could
provide . Consumers could appreciate the value of upgrading home video by drawing
an analogy to the music CD, which in the 1980s replaced LP vinyl discs. Moreover,
studios wanted a format that was more difficult to copy and pirate than videotape. The
solution was the heavy encryption that could be programmed into a digital medium .
And by establishing different regional DVD formats, the studios could protect
themselves from discs being shipped to countries where the film had not yet opened
theatrically.

After several years of quarreling over standards, Sony-Philipsand Toshiba-Time

Warner merged their research to produce a five-inch digital disc that could hold a two-
hour movie. Introduced in Christmas 1997 ,the DVD found a warm welcome.

21
By the end of 2001, nearly 30 million hardware units and over $9 billion of discs had
been sold. Customers bought their favorite movies on DVD, a n d the new format
perked up the stagnant rental trade as well . Consumers found that they could watch
movies on their computer or on portable DVD players . Hollywood loved the format
because discs were cheaper to manufacture and ship than tape cassettes , and retail
sales yielded the studios a higher percentage of income than did rentals. DVDs
attracted movie fans with bonus features like trailers and voice-over interviews.
Studios began compiling DVD-friendly materials during production: “ making of”
documentaries, omitted scenes, alternate endings, storyboard images, alternate camera
angles, and script pages . The DVD of Shrek (2001) boasted eleven hours of extra
material and allowed home viewers to provide the voices for characters-a strategy that
blurred the line between a film and a videogame.
In the 1980s, film buffs had begun to fashion “ home theaters “ that played 12 -inch
laserdiscs (a high-end forerunner of the DVD) on expensive video projectors and
multichannel decoders. Prices on big-screen monitors, projectors, and sound systems
began to come down just as the DVD appeared on the market. The new format
launched a more affordable home cinema . No wonder, then, that many in the industry
began to imagine digital projection in theatres as well . A digitized film could be sent
out to theatres on disc, via satellite, or on the Internet. No more costly lab work, no
more worn or spliced copies, and no prints falling into the hands of a pirate who would
use it to strike video copies.
The DVD demonstrated that a movie could be acceptably stored as a string of tightly
packed ones and zeros .Digital presentation, at home and at the multiplex, was
becoming a reality. Film had taken a step closer to merging with video and computer-
based software.
By 2000, home video was yielding the studios an annual $20 billion worldwide, three
times the North American box-office income. Video penetration was virtually
complete : two-thirds of all U.S. households subscribed to cable or satellite services,
and nearly 90 % had at least one VCR . At the same time, cable companies and
broadcast networks were paying record sums for rights to blockbuster films . As movie
channels proliferated in Europe, studio libraries were reopened,for hefty prices .The
DVD, the most swiftly adapted consumer electronics appliance in U.S. history, was
also taking off internationally. Not everything that happened in American cinema
during the 1980s and 1990s can be traced to the rise of video, but this technology had
powerful and pervasive effects on business practices, film styles and genres, and
culture .

22
 Conclusion

To sum up,the American film industry has developed from a highly structured,
centralized, factory-style studio system to a more fragmented package unit system in
which individual films are pitched by independent producers to competing studios. The
result has been a shift from assembly-line production, with its formulaic use of genres,
studio styles and stars, to a system in which directors, stars and others have more
creative freedom to work outside the limitations of genre, studio style, budgets and other
restrictions.

Despite a short interlude, Hollywood today, like the old studio system, is still essentially
a vertically integrated oligopoly. In addition, the studios both of the past and of today
have utilized new technologies to maximize profits and to bring audiences into cinemas.
Independent film has always existed in the United States but flourished particularly
during and after the 1950s following the decline of the studio system. While it may now
be hard to distinguish an independent from a major studio, independent films are still a
key part of America's film output.

23
Bibliography

BOOKS:
1.Balio, Tino-The American Film Industry ,Univ. of Wnsconsin Press, Madison,1985
2.Gomery, Douglas-The Hollywood Studio System ,Macmillan, London,1986
3.Jacobs, Lewis-The Rise of the American Film, Harcourt Brace,New York, 1939
4.Maltby, Richard-Hollywood Cinema: An introduction , Blackwell, Oxford, 1995
5.Schaltz, Thomas-The New Hollywood, Routlidge, New York, 1993

WEBSITES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States
http://www.afi.com/

24
One of Muybridge's earlist motion studies, photographed on June 19 , 1878 .

The Kinetoscope was a peephole device that

ran the film around a series of rollers. Viewers
activated it by putting a coin in a slot.

25
The Lumiere brothers' first film, Workers The space capsule lands in the Man in the
Leaving the Factory, was a single shot made Moon 's eye in Melies's fantasy A Trip to the
outside their photographic factory. It embodied Moon.
the essential appeal of the first films: realistic
movement of actual people.

The Cascade Theater in Newcastle,

Pennsylvania was the first nickelodeon
acquired by Jack, Albert, Sam, and
HarryWarner. A sign promises "Refined
Entertainment for Ladies, Gentlemen, and
Children. "

26
Griffith's KKK saves the South from
Reconstruction in Birth of a Nation 1915

During the classical Hollywood era, each studio

was renowned for a certain genre of film or a
particular roster of stars. Spencer Tracy, Bing
Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers were some of the well-known
performers that emerged during this period. In
addition, the four actresses shown on left
worked on such classics as Susan and God
(1940), She Done Him Wrong (1933), Grand
Hotel (1932) and Coquette (1929).

Top row, from left to right: Joan Crawford

(MGM) and Mae West (Paramount). Bottom
row, from left to right: Greta Garbo (MGM)
and Mary Pickford (United Artists).

Citizen Kane -often cited as ‘The Greatest

Film of All-Time’.

27
28