This 'transitional era' covered the years 1908-1917 & witnessed profound changes in the structure of the motion picture industry in the US, involving film genre, film form, filmmaking practices & the emergence of the studio system. The pattern which emerged dominated the industry for decades to come.

The years between 1908 and 1917 witnessed what may have been the most significant transformation in American film history. During this "transitional era," widespread changes affected film form and film genres, filmmaking practices and industry structure, exhibition sites, and audience demographics. By the end of the period, cinema had moved toward the shape it would assume for decades under the studio system. This collection of new essays by prominent film scholars traces these myriad changes, presenting the most detailed and comprehensive portrait yet of this pivotal stage in cinema's development. Topics under discussion include debates about cinema's place in American culture; the influence of an evolving feature format; the role of state censorship; emerging genres and audiences; onscreen depictions of gender, race, and nationality; changing exhibition practices and theater locales; and the emergence of Hollywood as the nation's film capital. Contributors: Richard Abel, Constance Balides, Ben Brewster, Scott Curtis, Lee Grieveson, Tom Gunning, Charlie Keil, J. A. Lindstrom, Roberta E. Pearson, Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Lauren Rabinovitz, Ben Singer, Shelley Stamp, Jacqueline Stewart

The period 1907–1913 marks a crucial transitional moment in American cinema. As moving picture shows changed from mere novelty to an increasingly popular entertainment, fledgling studios responded with longer running times and more complex storytelling. A growing trade press and changing production procedures also influenced filmmaking. In Early American Cinema in Transition, Charlie Keil looks at a broad cross-section of fiction films to examine the formal changes in cinema of this period and the ways that filmmakers developed narrative techniques to suit the fifteen-minute, one-reel format. Keil outlines the kinds of narratives that proved most suitable for a single reel’s duration, the particular demands that time and space exerted on this early form of film narration, and the ways filmmakers employed the unique features of a primarily visual medium to craft stories that would appeal to an audience numbering in the millions. He underscores his analysis with a detailed look at six films: The Boy Detective; The Forgotten Watch; Rose O’Salem-Town; Cupid’s Monkey Wrench; Belle Boyd, A Confederate Spy; and Suspense.

This 'transitional era' covered the years 1908-1917 & witnessed profound changes in the structure of the motion picture industry in the US, involving film genre, film form, filmmaking practices & the emergence of the studio system. The pattern which emerged dominated the industry for decades to come.

This text offers readers a look at the time when sound was a vexing challenge for filmmakers and the source of contentious debate for audiences and critics. The author presents a view of the talkies' reception, amongst other issues.

It was during the teens that filmmaking truly came into its own. Notably, the migration of studios to the West Coast established a connection between moviemaking and the exoticism of Hollywood. The essays in American Cinema of the 1910s explore the rapid developments of the decade that began with D. W. Griffith's unrivaled one-reelers. By mid-decade, multi-reel feature films were profoundly reshaping the industry and deluxe theaters were built to attract the broadest possible audience. Stars like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks became vitally important and companies began writing high-profile contracts to secure them. With the outbreak of World War I, the political, economic, and industrial groundwork was laid for American cinema's global dominance. By the end of the decade, filmmaking had become a true industry, complete with vertical integration, efficient specialization and standardization of practices, and self-regulatory agencies.

In Transition Cinema, Jessica Stites Mor documents the critical role filmmakers, the film industry, and state regulators played in Argentina's volatile and unfinished transition from dictatorship to democracy. She shows how, during periods of both military repression and civilian rule, the state moved to control political film production and its content, distribution, and exhibition. She also reveals the strategies that the industry, independent filmmakers, and film activists employed to comply with or circumvent these regulations. Stites Mor traces three distinct generations of transition cinema, each defined by a seminal event that shifted the political economy of national filmmaking. The first generation of filmmakers witnessed and participated in civil uprisings, such as the Cordobazo in 1969, and faced waves of repression, violence, and censorship. This generation gave rise to vibrant underground exhibitions and film clubs and eventually became symbolically linked to the Peronist Left and radical militancy. Following the 1983 return to civilian rule, a second generation of political filmmakers emerged at the center of public debates, when Buenos Aires became the locus for state-level cultural programs to address human rights and collective memory. Building on that legacy, a third generation of filmmakers explored new modes of activist and political filmmaking aided by digital technology. They pioneered new genres such as the street phenomenon of cine piquetero and introduced resistance politics and social movements into highly visible public spaces. In this captivating work, Stites Mor examines how social movements, political actors, filmmakers, and government and industry institutions, all became deeply enmeshed in the project of Argentina's transition cinema. She demonstrates how film emerged as the chronicler of political struggles in a dialogue with the past, present, and future, whose message transcended both cultural and national borders.

Investigates how progressivism structured many aspects of understudied era of cinema. Caught between the older model of short film and the emerging classic era, the transitional period of American cinema (1907-1917) has typically posed a problem for studies of early American film. Yet in Cinema and Community: Progressivism, Exhibition, and Film Culture in Chicago, 1907-1917, author Moya Luckett uses the era's dominant political ideology as a lens to better understand its cinematic practice. Luckett argues that movies were a typically Progressive institution, reflecting the period's investment in leisure, its more public lifestyle, and its fascination with celebrity. She uses Chicago, often considered the nation's most Progressive city and home to the nation's largest film audience by 1907, to explore how Progressivism shaped and influenced the address, reception, exhibition, representational strategies, regulation, and cultural status of early cinema. After a survey of Progressivism's general influences on popular culture and the film industry in particular, she examines the era's spectatorship theories in chapter 1 and then the formal characteristics of the early feature film-including the use of prologues, multiple diegesis, and oversight-in chapter 2. In chapter 3, Luckett explores the period's cinema in the light of its celebrity culture, while she examines exhibition in chapter 4. She also looks at the formation of Chicago's censorship board in November 1907 in the context of efforts by city government, social reformers, and the local press to establish community standards for cinema in chapter 5. She completes the volume by exploring race and cinema in chapter 6 and national identity and community, this time in relation to World War I, in chapter 7. As well as offering a history of an underexplored area of film history, Luckett provides a conceptual framework to help navigate some of the period's key issues. Film scholars interested in the early years of American cinema will appreciate this insightful study.

During the 1920s, sound revolutionized the motion picture industry and cinema continued as one of the most significant and popular forms of mass entertainment in the world. Film studios were transformed into major corporations, hiring a host of craftsmen and technicians including cinematographers, editors, screenwriters, and set designers. The birth of the star system supported the meteoric rise and celebrity status of actors including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Rudolph Valentino while black performers (relegated to "race films") appeared infrequently in mainstream movies. The classic Hollywood film style was perfected and significant film genres were established: the melodrama, western, historical epic, and romantic comedy, along with slapstick, science fiction, and fantasy. In ten original essays, American Cinema of the 1920s examines the film industry's continued growth and prosperity while focusing on important themes of the era.

Probably no decade saw as many changes in the Hollywood film industry and its product as the 1930s did. At the beginning of the decade, the industry was still struggling with the transition to talking pictures. Gangster films and naughty comedies starring Mae West were popular in urban areas, but aroused threats of censorship in the heartland. Whether the film business could survive the economic effects of the Crash was up in the air. By 1939, popularly called "Hollywood's Greatest Year," films like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz used both color and sound to spectacular effect, and remain American icons today. The "mature oligopoly" that was the studio system had not only weathered the Depression and become part of mainstream culture through the establishment and enforcement of the Production Code, it was a well-oiled, vertically integrated industrial powerhouse. The ten original essays in American Cinema of the 1930s focus on sixty diverse films of the decade, including Dracula, The Public Enemy, Trouble in Paradise, 42nd Street, King Kong, Imitation of Life, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Swing Time, Angels with Dirty Faces, Nothing Sacred, Jezebel, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Stagecoach .