History of Film

Film as an art form grew out of a long tradition of literature, storytelling, narrative drama, art, mythology, puppetry, shadow play, cave paintings and perhaps even dreams. In addition, the technology of film, emerged from developments and achievements much further back in human history.

"The Golden Age of Hollywood" in cinema history roughly refers to the period beginning with the advent of sound (this was, of course, prior to The Great Depression) until after the end of WWII. This was the heyday of the Hollywood studio system with tremendous output from Universal, MGM, Columbia, UA, RKO, Paramount Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, and Warner Brothers. Genre films became popular in the 1930s: westerns, comedies, musicals, dramas and cartoons. Dracula and Frankenstein incarnated into their silver screen depictions in 1931. King Kong premiered in 1933. Howard Hughes produces Hell's Angels in 1930. Disney released several short animations in the beginning of the decade, including the first Technicolor production in 1932. The Golden Age included some of the most celebrated American movies ever made. Such films as King Kong, Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane, are examples of the accomplishments in cinematic technique in this era. Walt Disney also began producing his first feature-length films in this period, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), Bambi, (1942), and Pinocchio & Fantasia both from 1940. Fantasia is notable for Fantasound, a project that incubated significant developments in film sound recording and playback techniques adopted and expanded upon by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, particularly, SMPTE -- pronounced SIMP-tee.

The "Golden Age" effectively came to a close in 1948, when in a landmark legal decision the Supreme Court of the United States found several major studios guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, through their monopolizing control of the production, distribution, and exhibition of their movies.

French film critics began to notice a certain stylistic approach to certain genres in American film, Gangster movies and crime dramas in particular, and began to refer to this type of movie as "Film noir". Robert Siodmak's The Killers (based on the Ernest Hemingway short story) is a prime example. Suspicion, (1941), and Saboteur, (1942) were Alfred Hitchcock's contributions to the style. Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), one of the most critically acclaimed movies of all time, helped to establish film noir and became one of its icons. Other examples include Laura, Murder My Sweet, and Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (all 1944).