Hollywood

          In this post I’m going to take a set back from reviewing movies and instead talk about the history of Hollywood.  Hollywood has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century and has helped the U.S. film industry make more money each year then any other country since 1920.  Hollywood’s history can be divided into four main parts.  Theses four parts are known as the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period.

The silent film era (1894-1929) refers to a film with no synchronized recorded sound or spoken dialogue.  In silent films the dialogue is transmitted through body gestures such as hand motions.  The classical Hollywood cinema is defined as a film which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s (Monaco).  New Hollywood refers to the time between the late-1960s and early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America and influenced the types of films that were produced by their production and marketing values (Cox).  New Hollywood is also called the Hollywood Renaissance because it changed the way major studios approached filmmaking.  The contemporary period, which is the current period we are in began in the 1980s, is known for the development of blockbuster franchises, large scale marketing campaigns, and an increasing emphasis on special effects.

When it comes to Hollywood films one of the biggest factors that can make or break a film are the reviews it receives by film critics.  Positive film reviews especially have a big effect on independent films with smaller marketing budgets, an example is The Hurt Locker the film would never have been as successful if it was not for the positive reviews they received.  However, a bad review can do just the opposite and turn the film into a box office disaster.  Eddie Lew, a journalist for the New York Times, recently stated that “critics should wait until a show’s official opening before they delivered their verdict in a review.”  By doing so it gives the film a chance to do good in the box office before a review ruins the movie, plus it also gives a chance for the movie critic to see the film multiple times which allows him to write a more fair evaluated review.

Bibliography

Cox, Gordon. "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood." Daily Variety 17 May 2010, Sec. 3. Print.

Lew, Eddie. "What's Fair is Fair, Unless It's Not." New York Times [New York City] 7 January 2011, n. page. Print.

Monaco, Paul. “A History of American Movies a Film-by-Film Look at the Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema.” Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010.