History of Film and Cinema.
History of Film and Cinema
Today’s modern entertainment cannot be imagined without the movie industry, an industry that has not only helped to shape our popular culture but also empowered countless artists, crewmen, and actors to test the limits of human imagination, emotion, and fashion. They managed to do so by harnessing all the available technical resources and enabling artists to paint on the canvases that expended in their scope with each passing year for more than a century now. Today, just like one hundred years ago when silent movies were popular, films enable us to dream a little more and strive to be better.
Film HistoryThe history of cinema has gone through many changes that enabled the transformation of the movie industry from the modest beginning with black and white silent films to the point that we can enjoy it today.
Brief History
The history of movies started in the late 19th century with the era of movie pioneers who worked on initial efforts of establishing the movie business. During this time recording and projecting short single-camera films slowly expanded across Europe and United States, giving motivation to countless inventors and filmmakers to start expanding this business. Innovators like Thomas Edison created numerous devices that enabled movie reproduction, but his business decisions (patents) almost singlehandedly forced the movie creators out of the New York area and into sunny California where they created Hollywood studios in 2nd decade of the 20th century. However even before that popularization of film in the US and Europe can be mostly contributed to two influential companies - American Mutoscope Company that promoted short movies and created the first cinema in the US (“The Nickelodeon” in Pittsburg) and on the other side of the Atlantic, French Lumière Company created over 1000 short silent films produced on all four corners of the world. It would be a great mistake not to also mention one of the greatest visionaries of the silent movie era - Georges Méliès (who has in the first few years of the 20th century managed to revolutionize the field of cinematic special effects), Charles Pathé (owner of the largest film company of that time), Robert W. Paul, James Williamson, and G.A. Smith.
The sound era lasted until the late 1920s with the tremendous successes of the films of Charlie Chaplin, Ben Hur, Nosferatu, Battleship Potemkin, and others. However, a revolution in film arrived in 1927 in the Warne Bros. film “The Jazz Singer” which marked the beginning of a new era – the era of sound. From that point on, black and white sound films became immensely popular, birthing new stars and enabling directors and screenwriters to explore advanced techniques of storytelling. As World War 2 faded away in memories, stars like Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, and others ushered a new age of Hollywood, that promoted fast-paced comedies, musicals, gangsters, and even a few science fiction films.
As total domination of Hollywood over the entire population of the US came to the end with the advent of the television and the government intervention where cinemas were forbidden to be owned by the studios themselves, the film industry moved to the more serious themes, advances in storytelling, and actors whose performances blurred the line between protagonists and antagonists.
Carried to the 60s and 70s with the star talent of Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, and Frank Sinatra, the history of the film industry again changed with the arrival of the first Blockbuster films (Star Wars). And from that moment on, the film industry entered into a new age where summer blockbusters fight against winter Oscar contenders for the attention of the worldwide public.
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