The Hollywood film industry has dominated global film production, both in terms of style and sheer volume, for much of the twentieth century. To understand properly the phenomenon of Hollywood cinema, it must be examined both as a changing industrial system and as a distinctive stylistic approach to narrative film, since both of these make it much more than simply the geographical center of the American film industry.

Situated eight miles from Los Angeles, CA, Hollywood first began to attract attention as a base for film production in the early 1900s. Its ideal climate and location, close both to a big city and to the open countryside, made it a popular choice. Throughout the silentfilm era, Hollywood developed steadily towards the cherished status of its socalled “golden age,” the era of production from 1930–48 and the period during which it consolidated its “classical” style. Its international success was achieved through a rigorous approach to film production, built around the oligopoly of the studio system.

The studio system consisted of eight key players. The “Big Five,” namely Warner Bros, RKO, Twentieth Century FOX, Paramount and MGM, had all been active in taking over cinemas and expanding production throughout the 1920s. All five were selfsufficient in the areas of production, distribution and exhibition, and this “vertical integration” was crucial to their success. Beneath them in the hierarchy lay the “Little Three”: Universal, Columbia and United Artists. While not vertically integrated, they were notable because they held agreements allowing them to show their films in the prestigious cinemas owned by the Big Five.

By 1930 these eight companies had carved up the American industry between themselves into a community of interests which allowed very little access to outsiders or independents. The key organizing principles of the studios involved the specialized division of labor, mass production along assembly-line methods, and the star system where careers were carefully masterminded and managed. Genre production led to certain studios gaining specialist reputations and developing an attendant “studio look,” for example in the gritty gangster movies of Warner Bros. While highly successful, this process has since been criticized as an example of the industry’s mass standardization during this period.

In 1948 the Supreme Court reached a decision in the Paramount Decree that vertical integration was in fact unlawful. The studios were forced to sell off their cinemas, thus ending their monopoly. At the same time, a number of additional cultural and demographic changes heralded a new age for Hollywood. The rise of television meant a new arena of competition. Furthermore, the return of GIs after the war led to a baby boom, with a surge of interest in domestic leisure and the development of new suburbs away from the city locations of prestige cinemas. Cinema audiences dropped dramatically Hollywood fought back bravely in the 1950s with new innovations such as drive-ins, 3-D and a range of wide-screen formats, but the golden age had ended.

Though the end of vertical integration should have meant a far more accessible industry, the major studios ultimately remained dominant by retaining their control in the area of distribution. Nevertheless, some forty years later the independents of the 1990s arguably hold more influence and a bigger share of the audience than ever before. Most of the major studios are still active, but their survival has only been possible through a series of shifts in ownership since the 1960s so that most are currently owned by multinationals and conglomerates. The business interests of these companies are broad and often mutually supportive so that, for example, merchandising, television and video can be used both to promote interest in a film and ensure a long-term profit.

The studios of the golden age have acquired a mixed reputation over the years. They have often been rather pejoratively compared to factories, where a capitalist business ethic and concern with profits means that artistic concerns are low on the list of priorities.

But the factory analogy while apposite in some ways, does not always do the studios justice. Not only did this era produce some of cinema’s most feted “auteurs,” such as Howard Hawks and John Ford, it also established the “classical Hollywood” style, still evident in mainstream cinemas worldwide, that remains one of Hollywood’s lasting legacies.

The keynote of classical style is continuity editing, an aesthetic of “transparency” which disguises the construction of the film-making process. Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson’s seminal analysis of classical style (1985) identifies additional features such as the construction of a believable world, the centrality of clearly motivated characters, a cause—effect logic, linear narrative progression and a momentum directed at overcoming initial disruption with a strong sense of resolution and closure. However, stylistic variations since the 1970s–the so-called “New Hollywood” period—have demonstrated that these conventions are not immutable.

Reservations about the quality of Hollywood cinema are often indicative of the enduring cultural debate over whether the aims of “entertainment” and “art” are somehow intrinsically incompatible, raising fundamental issues as to what constitutes “art.” The conglomerates and multinationals controlling the studios now are still accused of producing mindless, predictable blockbusters, and the classical Hollywood style, though resilient, is not without its critics. Left-wing critiques of Hollywood and its adherence to verisimilitude maintain that it was, and largely remains, a “dream-factory” churning out escapist fantasies for the masses. While contemporary Hollywood undeniably enjoys more freedom to negotiate the boundaries of classical style, such critiques suggest that Hollywood has an ideological agenda where naturalization and the emphasis on closure continue to distract the audience from the more irresolute nature of real-life conflicts.