The History of Hollywood

 

Movies have been one of humanity’s most transformative technological and artistic achievements. They function as both a mirror of the human experience, as well as a projector for cultural mores. For over a century, Hollywood has played an important role in bringing American visions and values to a global audience. The dynamic between the cinema and pivotal moments in human history has shaped America and helped to spread American culture across the world.

 

The foundation of cinema as an industry of mass entertainment began in the late 19th century, a transformative era for the narrative art form. German inventor Ottomar Anschütz was instrumental in the early development of cinema holding the first public screening of life-sized motion pictures in Berlin in November 1894 using his Electrotachyscope, a device that displayed short motion picture loops. The Lumière brothers were also early pioneers of the motion picture industry holding the first public film screening in Paris in 1895, using their cinematograph to show "actuality" films and early comedies like L'Arroseur Arrosé.

 

As cinema continued to evolve, French filmmaker Georges Méliès emerged and utilized his background as an illusionist to explore special effects like stop tricks and dissolves, most famously in his 1902 science fiction landmark, A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune). During this same period in the United States, Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Company significantly advanced film grammar, or the visual language of cinema, with The Great Train Robbery (1903), a massive success that helped launch the medium into mass popularity by introducing the Western genre. The 1910s were a decade that saw the movie industry shift from short films (10 – 15 minutes in duration) to feature-length historical epics such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria(1914) and D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The decade also saw the studio system begin to take root as filmmakers started to move from the East Coast of the United States to Southern California.

 

Building on the feature-length cinematic innovations that began in the 1910s, the 1920s emerged as an era of Hollywood triumphant, fueled by a period of unprecedented economic expansion and prosperity in the United States. The major studios of the time—Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO, and Warner Bros—built lavish movie theaters across America and in major international cities like Paris, France and Johannesburg, South Africa. The late 1920s were marked by the invention of “talkies” that synchronized films with recorded dialogue and sound and began to replace the silent films that predominated the movie industry in the 1900s and 1910s. Wings (1927), a romantic aviation-drama set in World War I, would win the inaugural Academy Award for Best Picture. The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length talkie, told the story of a young man who breaks with his religious upbringing to pursue a career in music. The movies produced during the 1920s would fundamentally change the film industry and serve as a powerful allegory for the immigrant experience and the allure of Americanization during the Roaring Twenties. The era introduced synchronized sound, and not only changed how movies were made, but how they were watched and experienced by audiences.

 

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed ushered in a need for affordable escapism and entertainment. During the 1930s, Hollywood was characterized by a push for “clean entertainment,” mainly due to enforcement of the Hays Code—a stringent code of moral guidelines that from 1934 – 1968 presided over Hollywood and the American movie industry. After the stock market crash of 1929, heavily indebted Hollywood studios were vulnerable to political pressure and religious boycotts and could not afford to offend conservative movie goers. At the time, conservative groups argued that scandalous films were inappropriate for an era characterized by the national hardship of the Great Depression and increased their calls for a moral crackdown on the film industry. Appeals from reform groups and conservative critics led to the creation of Hays Code in 1930 and the Production Code Administration (PCA) in 1934 to enforce the Hays Code. As a result of the Hays Code and the PCA, movies became tools for national unity, helping a diverse immigrant population come together over the shared values of hard work and patriotism.

 

In the late 1930s, films like The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939) dominated the box office. At the same time, the entertainment industry began to address the rising tide of global fascism. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) provided a strong representation of Hollywood’s early, bold fight against Nazi ideology. The film, directed and starring Chaplin, was a parody of Adolf Hitler during his rise to power. This stirring plea for humanity and democracy resonated with both American viewers and a broader international audience.

 

The early 1940s saw Hollywood fully mobilize for World War II. A direct link between the U.S. Department of War and the film industry was established leading to the production of several films that attempted to rally public support for the war effort, such as the “Why We Fight” series, a collection of nonfiction propaganda films produced by the U.S. Department of War to gain acceptance for U.S. involvement in the war. The definitive film of the 1940s was Casablanca (1943). The movie functioned as a primary vehicle for political expression and captured the national mood of interventionism and sacrifice. Despite being remembered as one of the greatest romance films of all time, Casablanca’s core theme is deeply political, reflecting the shift from American isolationism to global engagement. Casablanca would serve as an emotional justification for World War II and humanize the complex geopolitical stakes for a global audience.

 

The Cold War and McCarthyism marked the firm industry during the 1950s, where the House Un-American Activities Committee targeted communist influences in Hollywood. Families began migrating to the suburbs, television began to dominate the home, and the film industry started to use immersive technologies like 3-D to attract more people into the theaters. On the Beach (1959), a film about a post-apocalyptic world following atomic war, captured the terrifying reality of the nuclear age. The movie was released at the height of the Cold War and banned in the Soviet Union because of its critique of nuclear policy. Soviet citizens were entranced by depictions of everyday American life, like owning private cars and not having to wait in long lines for food. The film remains a landmark example of how Hollywood’s projection of democracy was both an irresistible vision of American prosperity and a cautionary tale to the world about communism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

 

American society in the 1960s was characterized by civil unrest, a revolution in social values, and the Vietnam War. The Hays Code was abandoned in 1968 which led to the rise of more mature movie content and "auteur" filmmakers who would make bold social commentary in their work. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner(1967), a film confronting the topic of interracial marriage, was one of the monumental films of the era that challenged American culture and examined racial prejudice in society. One of the pivotal directors of the era, Stanley Kubrick, used dark satire and storytelling to question the long-term implications of technology and artificial intelligence with films like Dr. Strangelove (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

 

In the 1970s and 1980s, the modern blockbuster was born following the national disillusionment of the Watergate Scandal that occurred in the early 1970s and that led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon. The release of Star Wars (1977) transformed the film industry into a world of global franchises and laid the foundations for the modern-day superhero genre in such films as X-Men and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The universal language contained in films like Star Wars spread American culture worldwide and acted as a cultural stabilizer during an era when American politics felt increasingly morally ambiguous. By the 1980s, movies like Top Gun (1986) helped to rehabilitate the image of the U.S. military in the post-Vietnam era and project a resurgence of militant soft power. The US Navy even set up recruitment booths inside theaters that played the film to capitalize on the fervor of movie goers. Cinema during the 1980s became a primary vehicle for spreading American consumerism across the world, as the movie industry itself began to globalize.

 

The 1990s and 2000s marked a digital revolution within the movie industry. Jurassic Park (1993) helped establish the mainstream use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and The Lion King (1994) showed the massive global reach of animated features. The era also saw the expansion of LGBTQIA+ representation in the movie industry through films like Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Philadelphia (1993), which put a human face on the AIDS epidemic. These films challenged viewers to empathize with marginalized communities and influenced discourse surrounding discrimination and human rights. In addition, the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001, helped push cinema toward darker, more realistic places with an increased use of themes like violence and moral ambiguity, evident in films like No Country for Old Men (2007).

 

From the 2010s into the present, the film industry has been defined by the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon. Streaming platforms have democratized production and challenged traditional Hollywood hierarchies. Social, political, and environmental issues like the #MeToo movement, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic have also significantly reshaped the film industry—from production, to release, to viewing. In 2019, Parasite became the first non-English film to win Best Picture helping bring increased global recognition for international films. In 2020, The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, as part of its Academy Aperture 2025 initiative, issued new representation and inclusion standards for Best Picture nominees as a way to create a more inclusive cultural landscape. Films like 2021 Best Picture nominee Don’t Look Up (2021) used satire to comment on the rising crisis of climate change, while 2022’s Best Picture award winner Everything Everywhere All at Once helped to deconstruct long-standing stereotypes and put the spotlight on stories about underrepresented communities. These and other films released during the 2020s have led to an increase in diverse cinematic narratives.

 

As we near the end of the 2020s, the movie industry has been grappling with the existential threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The future of film is currently in uncharted waters as AI threatens to reshape modern cinema. While there are mixed views from writers, filmmakers, and actors on how AI should be used, Hollywood potentates like Martin Scorsese, Darren Aronofsky, and Ben Affleck have begun embracing the new technology by investing in AI startup companies that serve the industry. The rise of AI comes at a time when in-person movie theater attendance continues to decline, precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of digital streaming platforms. The movie industry is also quickly evolving through industry consolidation—such as the very publicized $28 million mega-merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers. As the decade and 21st century continue to progress, Hollywood will remain at a crossroads between art and commerce, as the evolution of the digital age changes how we view the world through cinema and culture. Though the future of film industry is uncertain, movies, as they have for over a century, will undoubtedly continue to shape human history and culture across the world.