BEGINNINGSThe history of film spans over a hundred years, from the latter part of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. Motion pictures developed gradually from a carnival novelty to one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment, and mass media in the 20th century. Motion picture films have had a substantial impact on the arts, technology, and politics.
Inventors and producers tried from the very beginnings of moving pictures to connect the image with appropriate sounds, but no practical method was developed until the late 1920s. Thus, for the first thirty years of their history, movies were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects, and with dialogue and narration presented in intertitles.
By 1907 there were about 4,000 small “nickelodeon” cinemas in the United States. The films were shown with the accompaniment of music provided by a pianist, though there could be more musicians. There were also a very few larger cinemas in some of the biggest cities. Initially, the majority of films in the programmes were Pathé films (a film company), but this changed fairly quickly as the American companies cranked up production.
The program was made up of just a few films, and the show lasted around 30 minutes. So, the program was changed twice or more a week, and went up to five changes of program a week after a couple of years.In general, cinemas were set up in the established entertainment districts of the cities. In other countries of the Western world the film exhibition situation was similar. With the change to “nickelodeon” exhibition there was also a change, led by Pathé in 1907, from selling films outright to renting them through film exchanges.
HOLLYWOOD
Until 1914 the cinemas of France and Italy were the most globally popular and powerful. But the United States was already gaining quickly when World War I (1914-1918) caused a devastating interruption in the European film industries. The American industry, or "Hollywood", as it was becoming known after its new geographical center in California, gained the position it has held, more or less, ever since: movie factory for the world, exporting its product to most countries on earth and controlling the market in many of them.
By the 1920s, the U.S. reached what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800 feature films annually, or 82% of the global total. The comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clar Bow, made these performers’ faces well-known on every continent.
This development was contemporary with the growth of the studio system and its greatest publicity method, the star system, which characterized American film for decades to come and provided models for other movie industries.
Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_film#Precursors_of_film
