A Brief History of the
American Film Industry
Background
• Photography makes film possible
• Modern camera developed late 1800’s
• First movies were collections of stills
Edward Muybridge
• 1877, first “movie”
• Helped someone
win a bet about
horses galloping
• Used multiple
cameras and
tripwires
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Thomas Edison
• Invented the Kinetescope
• Contained in a giant box,
played a 90-second film at
Columbian Exposition, 1893
• Generally credited with
inventing the movie camera
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Lumiere Brothers
• 1895, screened the
first public “movie”
using their portable
“cinematograph”
• 10 short films lasting
20 minutes
• Caused a sensation
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Film for the Public
• Edison’s The Great Train Robbery, 1903
(11 minute Western- huge hit)
• Nickelodeons spread by the thousands
(small viewing booths screening raunchy
material)
The Birth of Modern Film
• D.W. Griffith, director of The Birth of a Nation,
1915 (first feature-length film)
• Plot: In the post-Civil War South, northerners
and black soldiers move in to persecute whites,
who are saved by the newly formed Ku klux Klan
• The “birth” of the nation was the uniting of
Northern and Southern whites against the
common enemy- black people.
• Technical masterpiece, horribly distorted history
The Birth of a Nation’s
Contribution to Film
• Developed or perfected the following: moving the
camera!, close-ups, close-ups with slow pan, jump
cuts, close-ups turning into long shots, flashbacks,
intercutting, dolly shot, tinted / colored film for
effect, use of soundtrack to tell story
• Plot pieces which have become cliche: barroom
brawl, surrounded heroes attacked by savages,
cavalry saving the day, masculine hero and blonde
heroine, monster chase scene
History of Hollywood
• 1915, Development of the “star system”
(the creation and promotion of movie
stars)
• First major motion picture company:
United Artists (others: Fox, Columbia,
Paramount, MGM, universal, etc.)
• These companies create, finance,
produce, direct, compose scores, provide
actors, market, and distribute films
The Silent Era: 1920’s
• Film companies flock to California after
WWI: cheap land, interesting scenery,
good weather and light
• Hollywood is established (sign: 1923)
• Development of large theaters that seat 12 thousand people
• 1927: The Jazz Singer (first “talkie”)
• 1928: First Walt Disney cartoon
The Golden Age: 1930’s
• Great Depression begins, 1929
• Movie industry booms, producing some of the great
musicals, horror films, gangster flicks, and screwball
comedies
• European film industry people begin to flock to
Hollywood
• 1939: 769 movies released, 80,000,000 tickets sold per
week, 65% of Americans went to movies regularly
• 1994: 470 movies released, 25,000,000 tickets sold per
week, 10% of Americans went to movies regularly
The 1940’s
• Film as propaganda
• Patriotic WWI films like Sergeant York
(1941)
• Documentaries like Frank Capra’s Why
We Fight (1941)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Wartime romances, homespun hero
stories, etc.
The 1950’s and 1960’s
• Advent of television cripples movie industry at first
(Pre WWII: 500+ movies per year: 1950’s, 250 per
year)
• Movie industry fought TV industry and lost
• McCarthyism threatened creativity
• Hollywood Ten and the House Un-American
Activities Committee
• The age of the western in the 1950’s
• Hollywood languishes in the 1960s
• First successful “indie” films in the 1960’s
Hollywood’s Renaissance:
the 1970’s
• An explosion of excellent films and brilliant
actors
• Independent, radical filmmakers influenced by
European film styles
• Birth of the “mega-blockbuster”
• Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather I
and II, The Exorcist, Chinatown, One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Jaws, Star Wars,
Apocalypse Now, etc.
The 1980’s-Present
• Cineplexes
• International Distribution
• Spin-Off Merchandising
• Big Budget Films as well as Indies
• Movie Rentals
• Cable
• HBO
• Digital Cameras, Digital Editing
• Development of Computer Graphics*