History of the motion picture - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Encyclopedia Britannica (ч. 2)

In Great Britain the post-World War II cinema was even more literary than in France, relying heavily on the adaptation of classics in the work of such directors as Laurence Olivier (Henry V, 1944; Hamlet, 1948; Richard III, 1955), David Lean (Great Expectations, 1946; Oliver Twist, 1948), and Anthony Asquith (The Importance of Being Earnest, 1952). Even less-conventional films had literary sources (Carol Reed’s Outcast of the Islands, 1951; Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger’s The Red Shoes, 1948, and The Tales of Hoffman, 1951). There were exceptions to this trend in a series of witty, irreverent comedies made for Michael Balcon’s Ealing Studios (Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949; The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951; The Man in the White Suit, 1951), most of them starring Alec Guinness, but, on the whole, British postwar cinema was elitist and culturally conservative.

In reaction, a younger generation of filmmakers led by Lindsay Anderson, Czechoslovak-born Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson organized the Free Cinema movement in the mid-1950s. Its purpose was to produce short low-budget documentaries illuminating problems of contemporary life (Anderson’s O Dreamland, 1953; Richardson’s Momma Don’t Allow, 1955). Grounded in the ideology and practice of Neorealism, Free Cinema emerged simultaneously with a larger social movement assailing the British class structure and calling for the replacement of bourgeois elitism with liberal working-class values. In the cinema this antiestablishment agitation resulted in the New Cinema, or Social Realist, movement signaled by Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), the first British postwar feature with a working-class protagonist and proletarian themes. Stylistically influenced by the New Wave, with which it was concurrent, the Social Realist film was generally shot in black and white on location in the industrial Midlands and cast with unknown young actors and actresses. Like the New Wave films, Social Realist films were independently produced on low budgets (many of them for Woodfall Film Productions, the company founded in 1958 by Richardson and playwright John Osborne, one of the principal Angry Young Men, to adapt the latter’s Look Back in Anger), but their freshness of both content and form attracted an international audience. Some of the most famous were Richardson’s A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving (1962) and Billy Liar (1963), Anderson’s This Sporting Life (1963), and Reisz’s Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966).

These films and others like them brought such prestige to the British film industry that London briefly became the production capital of the Western world, delivering such homegrown international hits as Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963), Schlesinger’s Darling (1965), Richard Lester’s two Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965), Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), and Anderson’s If… (1968), as well as such foreign importations as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966), Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966), and American Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). This activity inspired a new, more visually oriented generation of British filmmakers—Peter Yates, John Boorman, Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg, and Ridley Scott—who would make their mark in the 1970s; but, as England’s economy began its precipitous decline during that decade, so too did its film industry. Many British directors and performers defected to Hollywood, while the English-language film market simultaneously experienced a vigorous and unprecedented challenge from Australia. In the 1980s, amid widespread speculation about the collapse of the film industry, British annual production reached an all-time low.

Albert Finney in Tom JonesAlbert Finney in Tom Jones.Courtesy of United Artists Corporation

Great Britain’s film industry, however, has a long history of rebounding from periods of crisis. A major factor in the revival of British cinema during the late 20th century was the founding in 1982 of Channel 4, a television network devoted to commissioning—rather than merely producing—original films. Its success led to the establishment of a subsidiary, FilmFour Ltd., in 1998. Internationally acclaimed films produced or coproduced under either the Channel 4 or the FilmFour banner include A Room with a View (1986), The Crying Game (1992), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Trainspotting (1996), Secrets and Lies (1996), The Full Monty (1997), and Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). Also contributing to the resurgence of British film was the National Lottery, which, after its establishment in 1994, annually contributed millions of pounds to the film industry. Germany

Germany’s catastrophic defeat in World War II and the subsequent partitioning of the country virtually destroyed its film industry, which had already been corrupted by the Nazis. Rebuilt during the 1950s, the West German industry became the fifth largest producer in the world, but the majority of its output consisted of low-quality Heimatfilme (“homeland films”) for the domestic market. When this market collapsed in the 1960s because of changing demographic patterns and the diffusion of television, the industry was forced to turn to the federal government for subsidies. In recognition of the crisis, 26 writers and filmmakers at the Oberhausen film festival in 1962 drafted a manifesto proclaiming the death of German cinema and demanding the establishment of a junger deutscher Film, a “young German cinema.” The members of this Oberhausen group became the founders of Das Neue Kino, or the New German Cinema, which was brought into being over the next decade through the establishment of the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (1965; Young German Film Board, a grant agency with funding drawn from the cultural budgets of the federal states), the Filmförderungsanstalt, or FFA (Film Subsidies Board, which generated production funds by levying a federal tax in part on theatre tickets), and the independent distributing company Filmverlag der Autoren (1971; Authors’ Film-Publishing Group), with additional funding from the two West German television networks.

These institutions made it possible for a new generation of German filmmakers to produce their first features and established a vital new cinema for West Germany that attempted to examine the nation’s unbewältige Vergangenheit, or “unassimilated past.” The first such films, which were deeply influenced by the New Wave, especially by the work of Godard, included Volker Schlöndorff’s Der junge Törless (1966; Young Torless) and Alexander Kluge’s Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos (1968; The Artists Under the Big Top: Disoriented). In the 1970s, however, three major figures emerged as leaders of the movement—Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders.

Fassbinder was the most prolific, having made more than 40 features before he died in 1982. His films are also the most flamboyant. Nearly all of them take the form of extreme melodrama, ending in murder or suicide—Warum läuft Herr R. amok? (1969; Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?), Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972; The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), and Angst essen Seele auf (1973; Ali: Fear Eats the Soul)—and several are consciously focused on German wartime and postwar society (Die Ehe der Maria Braun [The Marriage of Maria Braun], 1979; Lola, 1981; Veronika Voss, 1982).

Herzog’s films tended more toward the mystical and the spiritual than the social, although there is nearly always some contemporary referent in his work—the image of idealism turned to barbarism in Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972; Aguirre, the Wrath of God); the hopeless inability of science to address the human condition in Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974; Every Man for Himself and God Against All, or The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser); the inherently destructive nature of technology in Herz aus Glas (1977; Heart of Glass); the incomprehensible nature of pestilence in his remake of Murnau’s Nosferatu (1979).

Wenders, on the other hand, was profoundly postmodern in his contemplation of alienation through spatial metaphor. In such works of existential questing as Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1971; The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) and Im Lauf der Zeit (1976; “In the Course of Time”; Kings of the Road), he addressed the universal phenomena of dislocation and rootlessness that afflict modern society.

The state subsidy system enabled hundreds of filmmakers, including many women (e.g., Margarethe von Trotta) and minorities, to participate in the New German Cinema. With the exception of the work of Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders, however, the New German Cinema did not find a large audience outside West Germany. Yet in terms of exploring and extending the audio-language system of film, it was to the 1970s and ’80s very much what the New Wave was to the ’60s, and its influence was widely felt.

By the reunification of Germany in 1990, a national identity had still not been forged in any of the various arts. Several outstanding German directors and production artists did emerge, but most of them achieved their greatest success in Hollywood. Roland Emerich (Independence Day, 1996; The Patriot, 2000) proved to be a skillful practitioner of the action-adventure genre, and Wolfgang Petersen, who received international acclaim for Das Boot (1982), earned a reputation for tense thrillers (In the Line of Fire, 1993) and unrelenting visual spectacles (The Perfect Storm, 2000). German cinematographers (Michael Ballhaus, Karl Walter Lindenlaub) and composers (Hans Zimmer, Christopher Franke) were also among the more notable artisans working in Hollywood films at the turn of the 21st century. Africa

The development of an indigenous film culture in Africa occurred at different moments in the history of the continent. The various timelines are related to the political, social, and economic situations in each country and to the varying effects of colonialism on the continent. Only Egypt had a truly active film industry for the first half of the 20th century; the development of cinema elsewhere on the continent was largely the result of individual efforts. One such example is Paul Soumanou Vieyra, the first African graduate of the French film school Institut des Hautes Études Ciné, who joined with friends to produce the short film Afrique sur Seine (1955), considered the first fiction film by black Africans.

Some countries, such as Morocco, did not develop a strong national cinema; others, such as Algeria and Tunisia, nationalized all or parts of their film industries. Several African nations joined the Fédération Pan-Africaine des Cinéastes (FEPACI; “Federation of Pan-African Filmmakers”), formed in 1969 to oversee the political and financial problems of the film industries throughout the continent.

As the 20th century drew to a close, many filmmakers and scholars began to examine the questions of, first, what constitutes an “African film” and, second, how film can best deal with the diaspora of the African people. On one hand, African filmmakers had to acknowledge and learn from the conventions of Western film. On the other, they wanted to highlight and preserve aspects of African culture that had been threatened by Western colonialism. As part of this search to define the goals of African cinema, African filmmakers often used the medium to explore the social issues plaguing postcolonial Africa. Directors such as Adama Drabo (Ta Dona [Fire], 1991) and Moufida Tlatli (Les Silences du palais [The Silences of the Palace], 1994) explored such matters as education, the environment, and women’s rights and suggested that traditional approaches to such issues had to be adapted to the realities of contemporary Africa. Aspects of these realities were examined by such directors as Tsitsi Dangarembga (Everyone’s Child, 1996) and Salem Mekuria (Ye Wonz Maibel [Deluge], 1995), who dealt with the AIDS crisis and political violence, respectively. Colonization itself was examined by such directors as Bassek ba Kobhio, whose satiric study of Albert Schweitzer, Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné (1995; The Great White Man of Lambaréné), shows how colonialism damaged both the colonizer and the colonized. Japan

Although more than half of Japan’s theatres were destroyed by U.S. bombing during World War II, most of its studio facilities were left intact. Japan, therefore, continued to produce films in quantity during the Allied occupation (1945–52). Many traditional Japanese subjects were forbidden by the Allied Command as promoting feudalism, however, including all films classified as jidai-geki (period dramas). Nevertheless, the film that first brought Japanese cinema to international attention belonged to that category: Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950), which won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice film festival. The film, a meditation on the nature of truth set in the medieval past, marked the beginning of the Japanese cinema’s unprecedented renaissance . During this period, new export markets opened in the West, and Japanese filmmakers produced some of their finest work, winning festival awards throughout the world. Kurosawa, who was already well known in his homeland for a number of wartime and postwar genre films, became the most famous Japanese director in the West on the strength of his masterful samurai epics—Shichinin no samurai (1954; Seven Samurai), Kumonosu-jo (1957; Throne of Blood), Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958; The Hidden Fortress), Yojimbo (1961), and Sanjuro (1962)—which raised the chambara, or “sword-fight,” film to the status of art. He made films in other genres, including literary adaptations, gendai-geki (modern dramas), gangster films, and period films that cannot be categorized at all (Akahige [Red Beard], 1965; Dersu Uzala, 1975); but Kurosawa always returned to the samurai form for his most profound statements about life and art (Kagemusha [The Shadow Warrior], 1980; Ran, 1985).

Two other established directors who produced their greatest films in the postwar period were Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujirō. Both had begun their careers in the silent era and were more traditionally Japanese in style and content than Kurosawa. Mizoguchi’s films, whether period (Sansho dayu [Sansho the Bailiff], 1954) or contemporary (Yoru no onnatachi [Women of the Night], 1948), were frequently critiques of feudalism that focused on the condition of women within the social order. His greatest postwar films were Saikaku ichidai onna (1952; The Life of Oharu), the biography of a 17th-century courtesan, and Ugetsu (1953), the story of two men who abandon their wives for fame and glory during the 16th-century civil wars. Both were masterworks that clearly demonstrated Mizoguchi’s expressive use of luminous decor, extended long takes, and deep-focus composition. As one of the great mise-en-scène directors, Mizoguchi can be compared to Murnau, Ophüls, and Welles, but his transcendental visual style makes him unique in the history of cinema.

Ozu Yasujirō too was a stylist, but the majority of his 54 films were shomin-geki, a variety of gendai film dealing with the lives of lower-middle-class families (Tokyo monogatari [Tokyo Story], 1953; Higanbana [Equinox Flower], 1958; Ukigusa [Floating Weeds], 1959). They were all very much alike and, in a sense, were all part of a single large film whose subject was the ordinary lives of ordinary people and the sacred beauty therein. Ozu’s minimalist style—originating in both Zen Buddhist aesthetics and the fact that most of his films were shot within the confines of a typical Japanese house—was based on his use of low-angle long takes in which the camera is positioned about three feet (one metre) off the floor at the eye level of a person seated on a tatami mat. This practice led Ozu to an especially imaginative use of offscreen space and “empty scenes.”

Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story)Scene from Tōkyō monogatari (1953; Tokyo Story), directed by Ozu Yasujirō.© Shochiku Films; photograph from a private collection

The second postwar generation of Japanese filmmakers was mainly composed of Kobayashi Masaki, Ichikawa Kon, and Shindo Kaneto. Kobayashi is best known for Ningen no joken (1959–61; The Human Condition), his three-part antiwar epic set during Japan’s brutal occupation of Manchuria, and the beautiful ghost film Kwaidan (1964). Ichikawa’s major works were the pacifist films Biruma no tategoto (1956; The Burmese Harp) and Nobi (1959; Fires on the Plain). Shindo is best known for his poetic semidocumentary Hadaka no shima (1960; The Island) and the bizarre, folkloristic Onibaba (1964).

The third generation of postwar directors was most active during the 1960s and ’70s. The group was deeply influenced by the French New Wave and included Teshigahara Hiroshi (Suna no onna [Woman in the Dunes], 1964), Masumura Yasuzo (Akai Tenshi [The Red Angel], 1965), Imamura Shohei (Jinruigako nyumon [The Pornographers], 1966), and Oshima Nagisa (Ai no corrida [In the Realm of the Senses], 1976). In the mid-1960s, however, competition from multiple-channel colour television and from American distributors forced the Japanese film industry into economic decline. A decade later, two major studios were bankrupt, and film production was increasingly dominated by two domestic exploitation genres: the yakuza-eiga, or contemporary urban gangster film, and the semipornographic eroducti on film, which mixed sex and sadism. During the 1980s and ’90s, Japan continued to produce the highest annual volume of films of any country in the world, but the studios remained in decline, and most serious productions, such as Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, were funded by foreign interests. At the turn of the 21st century, funding for films remained low, although the market for films was the greatest ever. This situation led to the mass production of low-budget films, as well as to the increased popularity of amateur and experimental films. China, Taiwan, and Korea

Other Asian nations have had spotty cinematic histories, although most developed strong traditions during the late 20th century. The film industries of China, Taiwan, and Korea were marked by government restrictions for most of the 20th century, and the majority of their output consisted of propaganda films. The loosening of many restrictions in the 1980s and ’90s resulted in a new wave of Asian directors who attained worldwide prominence. At the turn of the 21st century, China’s “Fifth Generation Cinema” was known for such outstanding young directors as Zhang Yimou, who specialized in tales of political oppression and sexual repression. Korea’s cinematic history is difficult to assess, because virtually no films made prior to World War II exist, but works produced during the 1950s and ’60s—the “golden age” of Korean cinema—gained a strong international reputation. The most successful Taiwanese directors of the late 20th century were Ang Lee, who directed films ranging from American morality tales such as The Ice Storm (1997) to the lavish martial-arts fantasy Wo hu zang long (2000; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon); and Hou Hsiao-hsien, who was best known for his sensitive family dramas (Hao nan hao nu [Good Men, Good Women], 1995).

Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden DragonZhang Ziyi (left) and Chang Chen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.© Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.; photo, Chan Kam Chuen India

Serious postwar Indian cinema was for years associated with the work of Satyajit Ray, a director of singular talent who produced the great Apu trilogy (Pather panchali [The Song of the Road], 1955; Aparajito [The Unvanquished], 1956; Apur sansar [The World of Apu], 1959) under the influence of both Jean Renoir and Italian Neorealism. Ray continued to dominate Indian cinema through the 1960s and ’70s with such artful Bengali films as Devi (1960; The Goddess), Charulata (1964; The Lonely Wife), Aranyer din ratri (1970; Days and Nights in the Forest), and Ashani sanket (1973; Distant Thunder). The Marxist intellectual Ritwik Ghatak received much less critical attention than his contemporary Ray, but through such films as Ajantrik (1958; Pathetic Fallacy) he created a body of alternative cinema that greatly influenced the rising generation.

In 1961 the Indian government established the Film Institute of India to train aspiring directors. It also formed the Film Finance Commission (FFC) to help fund independent production (and, later, experimental films). The National Film Archive was founded in 1964. These organizations encouraged the production of such important first features as Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969; Mr. Shome), Basu Chatterji’s Sara akaash (1979; The Whole Sky), Mani Kaul’s Uski roti (1969; Daily Bread), Kumar Shahani’s Maya darpan (1972; Mirror of Illusion), Avtar Kaul’s 27 Down (1973), and M.S. Sathyu’s Garam hawa (1973; Scorching Wind) and promoted the development of a nonstar “parallel cinema” centred in Bombay (Mumbai). A more traditional path was followed by Shyam Benegal, whose films (Ankur [The Seedling], 1974; Nishant [Night’s End], 1975; Manthan [The Churning], 1976) are relatively realistic in form and deeply committed in sociopolitical terms. During the 1970s the regional industries of the southwestern states—especially those of Kerala and Karnataka—began to subsidize independent production, resulting in a “southern new wave” in the films of such diverse figures as G. Aravindan (Kanchana sita [Golden Sita], 1977), Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Elipathayam [Rat-Trap], 1981), and Girish Karnad (Kaadu [The Forest], 1973). Despite the international recognition of these films, the Indian government’s efforts to raise the artistic level of the nation’s cinema were largely unsuccessful. During the 1970s, India was a land of more than one billion people, many of them illiterate and poor, whose exclusive access to audiovisual entertainment was film; television was the medium of the rich and powerful middle class. The Indian film industry was for much of the later 20th century the world’s largest producer of low-quality films for domestic consumption, releasing on average 700 features per year in 16 languages. Australia

Australia was a country virtually without a film industry until the late 1960s and early ’70s, when the federal government established the Australian Film Development Corporation (after 1975, the Australian Film Commission) to subsidize the growth of an authentic national cinema, founded a national film school (the Australian Film and Television School, later the Australian Film Television and Radio School, or AFTRS) to train directors and other creative personnel, and initiated a system of lucrative tax incentives to attract foreign investment capital to the new industry. The result was a creative explosion unprecedented in the English-language cinema. Australia produced nearly 400 films between 1970 and 1985—more than had been made in all of its prior history.

With financing from the Film Commission and such semiofficial bodies as the New South Wales Film Corporation (by the end of the decade each of the federal states had its own funding agency), the first films began to appear in the early 1970s, and within the next few years several talented directors began to receive recognition, including Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975), Bruce Beresford (The Getting of Wisdom, 1977), Fred Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, 1978), George Miller (Mad Max, 1979), and the first AFTRS graduates, Phillip Noyce (Newsfront, 1978) and Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, 1979). Unlike the productions financed with foreign capital by the Canadian Film Development Corporation during the same period, these new Australian films had indigenous casts and crews and treated distinctly national themes. By the end of the 1970s, Australian motion pictures were being prominently featured at the Cannes international film festival and competing strongly at the box office in Europe. In 1981 Australia penetrated the American market with two critical hits, Beresford’s Breaker Morant (1980) and Weir’s Gallipoli (1981), and the following year it achieved a smashing commercial success with Miller’s Mad Max II (1981; retitled The Road Warrior, 1982). In the 1980s, many Australian directors worked for the American film industry, with varying degrees of success (Schepisi: Barbarossa, 1982; Beresford: Tender Mercies, 1983; Armstrong: Mrs. Soffel, 1984; Weir: Witness, 1985; Miller: The Witches of Eastwick, 1987). Despite this temporary talent drain and a decline in government tax concessions, the Australian cinema remained one of the most influential and creatively vital in the world. Prominent younger directors helped to maintain Australia’s world status, including Baz Luhrmann, noted for his flamboyant visual style in such films as William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge (2001), and P.J. Hogan, known for biting social comedies such as Muriel’s Wedding (1994) and My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997). Russia, eastern Europe, and Central Asia

After World War II the Soviet Union’s film industry experienced greater stagnation than that of any other nation except Germany. The Socialist Realism doctrine imposed during Stalin’s dictatorship caused film production to fall from 19 features in 1945 to 5 in 1952. Although Stalin died the following year, the situation did not improve until the late 1950s, when such films as Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letyat zhuravli (1957; The Cranes Are Flying) and Grigory Chukhrai’s Ballada o soldate (1959; Ballad of a Soldier) emerged to take prizes at international film festivals. Some impressive literary adaptations were produced during the 1960s (Grigory Kozintsev’s Hamlet, 1964; Sergey Bondarchuk’s Voyna i mir [War and Peace], 1965–67), but the most important phenomenon of the decade was the graduation of a whole new generation of Soviet directors from the Vsesoyuzny Gosudarstvenny Institut Kinematografii (VGIK; “All-Union State Institute of Cinematography”), many of them from the non-Russian republics—the Ukraine (Yury Ilyenko, Larissa Shepitko), Georgia (Tengiz Abuladze, Georgy Danelia, Georgy Shengelaya and Eldar Shengelaya, Otar Yoseliani), Moldavia (Emil Lotyanu), Armenia (Sergey Paradzhanov), Lithuania (Vitautas Zhalekevichius), Kyrgyzstan (Bolotbek Shamshiev, Tolomush Okeyev), Uzbekistan (Elyor Ishmukhamedov, Ali Khamraev), Turkmenistan (Bulat Mansurov), and Kazakhstan (Abdulla Karsakbayev). By far the most brilliant of the new directors were Sergey Paradzhanov and Andrey Tarkovsky, who both were later persecuted for the unconventionality of their work. Paradzhanov’s greatest film was Tini zabutykh predkiv (1964; Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors), a hallucinatory retelling of a Ukrainian folk legend of ravishing formal beauty. Tarkovsky created a body of work whose seriousness and symbolic resonance had a major impact on world cinema (Andrey Rublev, 1966; Solaris, 1971; Zerkalo [Mirror], 1974; Stalker, 1979; Nostalghia [Nostalgia], 1983), even though it was frequently tampered with by Soviet censors.

During the 1970s the policy of Socialist Realism (euphemized as “pedagogic realism”) was again put into practice, so only two types of films could safely be made—literary adaptations and bytovye, or films of everyday life, such as Vladimir Menshov’s Moskva slezam ne verit (1980; Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears). The Soviet cinema then experienced a far-reaching liberalization under the regime of Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policy of glasnost (“openness”) took control of the industry away from bureaucratic censors and placed it in the hands of the filmmakers themselves. The Soviet cinema began to be revitalized as formerly suppressed films, such as Elem Klimov’s Agoniya (1975), were distributed for the first time, and films that dealt confrontationally with Stalinism, such as Abuladze’s Pokayaniye (1987; Repentance), were made without government interference.

Of the eastern European nations that fell under Soviet control after World War II, all except East Germany and Albania produced distinguished cinemas. Following the pattern set by the Soviets, these countries nationalized their film industries and established state film schools. They experienced a similar period of repressive government-imposed restrictions between 1945 and 1953, with a “thaw” during the late 1950s under Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. In Poland the loosening of ideological criteria gave rise to the so-called Polish school led by Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Matka Joanna od aniołŅw [Mother Joan of the Angels], 1961), Andrzej Munk (Eroica, 1957), and, preeminently, Andrzej Wajda (Pokolenie [A Generation], 1954; Kanał [Canal], 1956; Popiół i diament [Ashes and Diamonds], 1958). Wajda’s reputation grew throughout the 1960s and ’70s, when he was joined by a second generation of Polish filmmakers that included Roman Polanski (Nóż w wodzie [Knife in the Water], 1962), Jerzy Skolimowski (Bariera [Barrier], 1966), and Krzysztof Zanussi (Iluminacja [Illumination], 1972). The Polish cinema expressed its support of the Solidarity trade union in the late 1970s through films by Wajda and such younger directors as Krysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, and Feliks Falk.

The example of the Polish school encouraged the development of the Czech New Wave (1962–68), which became similarly entangled in politics. The Czechoslovak films that reached international audiences during this period were widely acclaimed for their freshness and formal experimentation, but they faced official disapproval at home, and many were suppressed for being politically subversive. Among the directors who were most critical of Pres. Antonín Novotný’s hard-line regime were Věra Chytilová (Sedmikrasky [Daisies], 1966), Jaromil Jireš (Zert [The Joke], 1968), Ján Kadár (Obchod na Korze [The Shop on Main Street], 1965), Miloš Forman (Hoří, má panenko [The Firemen’s Ball], 1967), Jirí Menzel (Ostře sledované vlaky [Closely Watched Trains], 1966), and Jan Němec (O Slavnosti a hostech [The Party and the Guests], 1966). When Alexander Dubček became president in January 1968, the Czechoslovak cinema eagerly participated in his brief attempt to give socialism “a human face.” After the Soviet invasion of August 1968, many New Wave films were banned, the Czechoslovak film industry was reorganized, and several prominent figures, including Forman and Němec, were forced into exile.

Vaclav Neckar and Jitka Bendova in Closely Watched TrainsVaclav Neckar and Jitka Bendova in Closely Watched Trains.Sigma III/Filmove Studio Barrandov

In Hungary the abortive revolution of 1956 forestalled a postwar revival in film until the late 1960s, when the complex work of Miklós Jancsó (Szegénylegények [The Round-Up], 1965; Csillagosok, katonák [The Red and the White], 1967; Még kér a nép [Red Psalm], 1972) began to be internationally recognized. The rigorous training given students at the Budapest Film Academy ensured that the younger generation of Hungarian filmmakers would rise to prominence, as happened in the case of István Szabó (1981; Mephisto), István Gaál (Magasiskola [Falcons], 1970), Márta Mészáros (Örökbefogadás [Adoption], 1975), and Pál Gábor (1978; Angi Vera), many of whose films—as do Jancsó’s—involve ideological interpretations of the national past.

Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria, unlike their more sophisticated Warsaw Pact allies, did not begin to develop film industries until after World War II. Yugoslavia was the most immediately successful and produced the countries’ first internationally known director: the political avant-gardist Dušan Makavejev (Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T. [The Tragedy of the Switchboard Operator], 1967). Makavejev belonged to the late 1960s movement known as Novi Film (New Film), which also included such directors as Puriša Djordjević, Aleksandar Petrović, and Živojin Pavlović, all of whom were temporarily purged from the film industry during a reactionary period in the early 1970s. This dark period came to an end in 1976 when the filmmakers of the Prague school made their debuts. Goran Marković, Rajko Grlić, Srdjan Karanović, Lordan Zafranović, and Emir Kusturica were all graduates of the FAMU film school in Prague who had begun their careers working for Yugoslav television. Their offbeat, visually flamboyant social comedies brought a new breath of life into Yugoslav cinema and won a number of international prizes. Like Czechoslovakia, whose Jiří Trnka perfected puppet animation in the 1950s, Yugoslavia also became world famous for its animation, especially that of the “Zagreb school” founded by Vatroslav Mimica and Dušan Vukotić.

The Romanian and Bulgarian film industries did not begin to progress until the mid-1960s. Both countries subsequently developed authentic national cinemas and boasted directors well known on the festival circuit (e.g., the Romanians Dan Piţa, Mircea Veroiu, and Mircea Daneliuc and the Bulgarians Hristo Hristov, Eduard Zakhariev, Georgi Dyulgerov, and award-winning animator Todor Dinov).

For decades, state money was readily available for filmmaking throughout the Soviet bloc countries, provided that the films were ideologically acceptable. This changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union in January 1992, whereupon funding became the chief obstacle to filmmaking in the region. By the late 1990s, fewer than two dozen films per year were produced in Russia. Adding to the decline were such factors as theatres that were closed or converted into businesses such as car dealerships, a home-video industry that was barely in its inceptive stages, and the popularity of American and Asian films. Although such directors as Sergey Bodrov and Vladimir Khotinenko received a degree of international acclaim, the financial situation of the film industries throughout Russia and eastern Europe during the 1990s suggested that it would be many years before these nations established a degree of prominence in world cinema. Spain and Mexico

ViridianaFernando Rey in Viridiana (1961), directed by Luis Buñuel.Kingsley International Release; photograph from a private collection

Buñuel, LuisLuis Buñuel on the set of Le Fantôme de la liberté (1974; The Phantom of Liberty).Mary Evans Picture Library Ltd/AGE fotostockOf the smaller film industries of the West, Spain’s should be noted because it produced one of the world’s greatest satirists in Luis Buñuel, and Mexico’s should be commended because it allowed Buñuel to work after he was forced out of Spain by the fascists. (Buñuel also worked frequently in France.) In a career that spanned most of film history, Buñuel directed scores of brilliantly sardonic films that assaulted the institutions of bourgeois Christian culture and Western civilization. Among his most successful are Los olvidados (1950; The Forgotten Ones), Él (1952; Torment), Nazarín (1958), Viridiana (1961), El ángel exterminador (1962; The Exterminating Angel), Belle de jour (1967), Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1973; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), and Le Fantôme de la liberté (1974; The Phantom of Liberty). Buñuel deeply influenced Carlos Saura, another Spanish filmmaker whose work tended toward the grotesque and darkly comic (La caza [The Hunt], 1966; La prima Angélica [Cousin Angelica], 1974; Bodas de sangre [Blood Wedding], 1981), as well as an entire generation of younger directors who began to work after Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 (e.g., Victor Erice, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Jaime Chavarri, and Pilar Miró). Pedro Almodóvar, whose provocative postmodernist works include Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Todo sobre mi madre (1999; All About My Mother), and Habla con ella (2002; Talk to Her), was hailed as Spain’s most innovative director since Buñuel.

Buñuel’s presence in Mexico between 1946 and 1965 had little effect on the general mediocrity of that nation’s film industry, however. The commercialism of the Mexican cinema was briefly mitigated by a group of idealistic young filmmakers in the late 1960s (Arturo Ripstein, Felipe Cazals, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo) but reappeared even more relentlessly in the following decade. The Mexican cinema enjoyed a resurgence at the turn of the 21st century, and directors such as Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, 2001) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores perros, 2000) gained international acclaim. Sweden

The post-World War II Swedish cinema, like the Spanish, is noted for producing a single exceptional talent: Ingmar Bergman. Bergman first won international acclaim in the 1950s for his masterworks Det sjunde inseglet (1957; The Seventh Seal), Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries), and Jungfrukällan (1960; The Virgin Spring). His trilogies of the 1960s—Såsom i en spegel (1961; Through a Glass Darkly), Nattvardsgästerna (1963; Winter Light), and Tystnaden (1963; The Silence); Persona (1966), Vargtimmen (1968; Hour of the Wolf), and Skammen (1968; Shame)—were marked by a deep spiritual and intellectual probing, and later films, such as Viskningar och rop (1972; Cries and Whispers) and Fanny och Alexander (1984; Fanny and Alexander), confirmed that he is essentially a religious artist. Throughout the 20th century, the Scandinavian film industries remained small, state-subsidized, and (after the introduction of sound) oriented largely toward the domestic market.

Viskningar och rop (Cries and Whispers)Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann in Viskningar och rop (1972; Cries and Whispers), directed by Ingmar Bergman.© 1973 New World Pictures Inc.; photograph from a private collection United States

In the United States, as elsewhere, the last half of the 1960s was a time of intense conflict between generations and of rapid social change. Deeply involved with its own financial crisis, Hollywood was slow to respond to this new environment, and the studios made increasingly desperate attempts to attract a demographically homogeneous audience that no longer existed. The stupendous failure of Twentieth Century–Fox’s blockbuster Cleopatra (1963) was briefly offset by the unexpected success of its The Sound of Music (1965), but over the next few years one box-office disaster after another threatened the studios’ independence until most were absorbed by conglomerates. RKO had been sold to the General Tire and Rubber Corporation in 1955, and Universal had been acquired by MCA (the Music Corporation of America) in 1962. Paramount was then taken over by Gulf + Western Inc. in 1966, United Artists by Transamerica Corporation in 1967, Warner Bros. by Kinney National Services, Inc. (later renamed Warner Communications), in 1969, and MGM by the Las Vegas financier Kirk Kerkorian in 1970. Continuing this trend, in 1981 Twentieth Century–Fox was acquired by Denver oil tycoon Marvin Davis (who later shared ownership with publisher Rupert Murdoch), and Columbia was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 1982. United Artists merged with MGM in 1981 to form MGM/UA, which was subsequently acquired by Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., in 1986. The impact of such mergers was pronounced because they reduced filmmaking in the United States to a subordinate role; in the profit-making machinery of these multinational corporations, film production was often less important than the production of such items as refined sugar, ball bearings, field ammunition, rubber tires, and soft drinks.

Before conglomeration had completely restructured the industry, however, there was an exciting period of experimentation as Hollywood made various attempts to attract a new audience among the nation’s youth. In an effort to lure members of the first “television generation” into movie theatres, the studios even recruited directors from the rival medium, such as Irvin Kershner (A Fine Madness, 1966), John Frankenheimer (Seconds, 1966), Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, 1965), Robert Altman (Countdown, 1968), Arthur Penn (Mickey One, 1965), and Sam Peckinpah (Major Dundee, 1965). These directors collaborated with film-school-trained cinematographers (including Conrad Hall, Haskell Wexler, and William Fraker), as well as with the Hungarian-born cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, to bring the heightened cinematic consciousness of the French New Wave to the American screen. Their films frequently exhibited unprecedented political and social consciousness as well. The youth cult and other trends of the late 1960s

Fonda, Peter; Hopper, Dennis: Easy Rider (1969)Peter Fonda (left) and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (1969), directed by Dennis Hopper.© 1969 Columbia Pictures Corporation; photograph from a private collectionThe years 1967–69 marked a turning point in American film history as Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969), and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) attracted the youth market to theatres in record numbers. (Altman’s M*A*S*H [1970] provided a novel comedic coda to the quintet.) The films were unequal aesthetically (the first three being major revisions of their genres, the last two canny exploitations of the prevailing mood), but all shared a cynicism toward established values and a fascination with apocalyptic violence. There was a sense, however briefly, that such films might provide the catalyst for a cultural revolution. Artistically, the films domesticated New Wave camera and editing techniques, enabling once-radical practices to enter the mainstream narrative cinema. Financially, they were so successful (Easy Rider, for example, returned $50,000,000 on a $375,000 investment) that producers quickly saturated the market with low-budget youth-culture movies, only a few of which—Penn’s Alice’s Restaurant (1969), Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock (1970), and David Maysles and Albert Maysles’s Gimme Shelter (1970)—achieved even limited distinction.

Concurrent with the youth-cult boom was the new permissiveness toward sex made possible by the institution of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system in 1968. Unlike the Production Code, this system of self-regulation did not prescribe the content of films but merely categorized them according to their appropriateness for young viewers. (G designates general audiences; PG suggests parental guidance; PG-13 strongly cautions parents because the film contains material inappropriate for children under 13; R indicates that the film is restricted to adults and to persons under 17 accompanied by a parent or guardian; and X or NC-17 signifies that no one under 17 may be admitted to the film—NC meaning “no children.” In practice, the X rating has usually been given to unabashed pornography and the G rating to children’s films, which has had the effect of concentrating sexually explicit but serious films in the R and NC-17 categories.) The introduction of the ratings system led immediately to the production of serious, nonexploitative adult films, such as John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Mike Nichols’s Carnal Knowledge (1971), in which sexuality was treated with a maturity and realism unprecedented on the American screen.

The revolution that some had predicted would overturn American cinema, as well as American society, during the late 1960s never took place. Conglomeration and inflation did occur, however, especially between 1972 and 1979, when the average cost per feature increased by more than 500 percent to reach $11 million in 1980. Despite the increasing costs, the unprecedented popularity of a few films (Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, 1972; Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, 1975; George Lucas’s Star Wars, 1977) produced enormous profits and stimulated a wildcat mentality within the industry. In this environment, it was not uncommon for the major companies to invest their working capital in the production of only five or six films a year, hoping that one or two would be extremely successful. At one point, Columbia reputedly had all of its assets invested in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a gamble that paid off handsomely; United Artists’ similar investment in Michael Cimino’s financially disastrous Heaven’s Gate (1980), however, led to the sale of the company and its virtual destruction as a corporate entity.

The new generation of directors that came to prominence at this time included many who had been trained in university film schools—Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader at the University of California, Los Angeles, George Lucas and John Milius at the University of Southern California,Martin Scorsese" class="md-crosslink"> Martin Scorsese andBrian De Palma" class="md-crosslink"> Brian De Palma at New York University, Spielberg at California State College—as well as others who had been documentarians and critics before making their first features (Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin). These filmmakers brought to their work a technical sophistication and a sense of film history eminently suited to the new Hollywood, whose quest for enormously profitable films demanded slick professionalism and a thorough understanding of popular genres. The directors achieved success as highly skilled technicians in the production of cinematic thrills, although many were serious artists as well.

Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (1974), directed by Roman Polanski.© Long Road Productions; photograph from a private collectionThe graphic representation of violence and sex, which had been pioneered with risk by Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and Midnight Cowboy in the late 1960s, was exploited for its sensational effect during the ’70s in such well-produced R-rated features as Coppola’s The Godfather, Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Spielberg’s Jaws, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), De Palma’s Carrie (1976), and scores of lesser films. The newly popular science-fiction/adventure genre was similarly supercharged through computer-enhanced special effects and Dolby sound as the brooding philosophical musings of Kubrick’s 2001 gave way to the cartoon-strip violence of Lucas’s Star Wars, Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and their myriad sequels and copies. There was, however, originality in the continuing work of veterans Altman (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 1971; Nashville, 1975; Three Women, 1977) and Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, 1971; The Shining, 1980), American Film Institute graduate Terrence Malick (Badlands, 1973; Days of Heaven, 1978), and controversial newcomer Cimino (The Deerhunter, 1978; Heaven’s Gate). In addition, Coppola (The Godfather; The Godfather, Part II, 1974; Apocalypse Now, 1979) and Scorsese (Mean Streets, 1973; Raging Bull, 1980) created films of unassailable importance. Some of the strongest films of the era came from émigré directors working within the American industry—John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Miloš Forman’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). In general, however, Hollywood’s new corporate managers lacked the judgment of industry veterans and tended to rely on the recently tried and true (producing an unprecedented number of high-budget sequels) and the viscerally sensational.

To this latter category belong the spate of “psycho-slasher” films that glutted the market in the wake of John Carpenter’s highly successful low-budget chiller Halloween (1978). The formula for producing films of this type begins with the serial murder of teenagers by a ruthless psychotic and adds gratuitous sex and violence, with realistic gore provided by state-of-the-art makeup and special-effects artists. Its success was confirmed by the record-breaking receipts of the clumsily made Friday the Thirteenth (1980). There were precedents for psycho-killer violence in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), but for decades the exploitation of gore had existed only at the periphery of the industry (in the “splatter” movies of Herschell Gordon Lewis, for example). The slasher films took the gore and violence into the mainstream of Hollywood films. The effect of new technologies

During the 1980s the fortunes of the American film industry were increasingly shaped by new technologies of video delivery and imaging. Cable networks, direct-broadcast satellites, and half-inch videocassettes provided new means of motion-picture distribution, and computer-generated graphics provided new means of production, especially of special effects, forecasting the prospect of a fully automated “electronic cinema.” Many studios, including Universal and Columbia, devoted the majority of their schedules to the production of telefilms for the commercial television networks, and nearly all the studios presold their theatrical features for cable and videocassette distribution. In fact, Tri-Star, one of Hollywood’s major producer-distributors, was a joint venture of CBS Inc., Columbia Pictures, and Time-Life’s premium cable service Home Box Office (HBO). HBO and competitor Showtime both functioned as producer-distributors in their own right by directly financing films and entertainment specials for cable television. In 1985, for the first time since the 1910s, independent film producers released more motion pictures than the major studios, largely to satisfy the demands of the cable and home-video markets.

The strength of the cable and video industries led producers to seek properties with video or “televisual” features that would play well on the small television screen (Flashdance, 1983; Footloose, 1984) or to attempt to draw audiences into the theatres with the promise of spectacular 70-mm photography and multitrack Dolby sound (Amadeus, 1984; Aliens, 1986). Ironically, the long-standing 35-mm theatrical feature survived in the mid-1980s in such unexpected places as “kidpix” (a form originally created to exploit the PG-13 rating when it was instituted in 1984—The Breakfast Club, 1985; Stand by Me, 1986) and, more dramatically, the Vietnam combat film (Oliver Stone’s Platoon, 1986; Coppola’s Gardens of Stone, 1987; Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, 1987). Responding to the political climate, the studios produced some of their most jingoistic films since the Korean War, endorsing the notion of political betrayal in Vietnam (Rambo: First Blood, Part II, 1985), fear of a Soviet invasion (Red Dawn, 1985), and military vigilantism (Top Gun, 1986). Films with a “literary” quality, many of them British-made, were also popular in the American market during the 1980s (A Passage to India, 1984; A Room with a View, 1985; Out of Africa, 1985).

Abraham, F. Murray; AmadeusF. Murray Abraham in Amadeus (1984).Courtesy of Orion Pictures Corporation

These trends were taken to greater extremes in the 1990s and beyond, to the extent that the style and content of a film determined its most popular venue. Major advances in computer-generated animation and special effects allowed for films of unprecedented visual sophistication (Jurassic Park, 1993; Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace, 1999; The Matrix, 1999), and audiences preferred the experience of seeing such films on large theatre screens. Computer animation was also put to good use in films that play equally well on theatre or television screens, such as Toy Story (1995), Antz (1998), and Chicken Run (2000). Independent producers, especially those who specialized in low-budget films of intimate subject matter, regained strength under the new regime of home video and created some of the most unconventional and interesting work the American cinema had seen in some time; they included the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan (Blood Simple, 1984; Fargo, 1996; O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, 1999; Adaptation, 2002), and Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, 1994; Jackie Brown, 1997). It was also an era in which low-cost marketing via the Internet could turn a $50,000 independent film into a $100,000,000 blockbuster (The Blair Witch Project, 1999). These “indie” films were too original to have been made in the studio era and too eccentric for the mass-market economies of the late 20th century. They harkened back to the vitality and integrity of the pre-studio age—to the work of D.W. Griffith, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, and Charlie Chaplin—when anything was possible because everything was new.

(From left to right) Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, and Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction (1994).Linda R. Chen/© 1994 Miramax Films; photograph from a private collection David A. Cook Robert Sklar The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Transition to the 21st century The expansion of media culture

The history of motion pictures in the last period of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st was shaped in part by new technologies and the expansion of media culture that such technologies fostered. In the 1980s, for example, the widespread adoption of the videocassette recorder (VCR) opened up new possibilities for the distribution of films as videocassettes, giving wider circulation and easier access to works made throughout the world. In the same manner, new cable and satellite television systems that delivered media directly to homes created additional markets for film distribution and income sources for film producers. With the availability of higher-quality video cameras, more filmmakers used video technology to lower production costs, later transferring the image to film stock for theatrical exhibition. In the following years, the spread and increasing capabilities of computer animation as well as digital video cameras and DVDs (digital video discs) accelerated these trends, with the computer emerging as a new production unit in filmmaking and the Internet as a site for film distribution and exhibition. One result of these changes was the appearance on the world stage of filmmakers—particularly Chinese-language ones—from places that had previously been little recognized within international film culture. Asian cinema China

Filmmaking had become nearly moribund in China from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s during the Cultural Revolution. Under new leadership in the late 1970s, the ruling Chinese Communist Party sought to instigate economic development and open the country to international commerce and communication. Some veteran filmmakers resumed their careers, and one, Xie Jin, made a controversial work, Furong zhen (1986; Hibiscus Town), showing the deleterious effects of communist political dogma on a rural village. The Beijing Film Academy, closed for more than a decade, reopened in 1978 and graduated its first new class in 1982. From this group came several figures who began to make films in the 1980s and who became known collectively as China’s Fifth Generation of film directors (the previous four generations had been associated with specific decades beginning in the 1910s and early ’20s).

The Fifth Generation significantly transformed Chinese cinema by moving production away from its traditional studio interiors and backlot standing sets and into distant rural locations, which the filmmakers in many cases had come to know when they were sent from the cities during the Cultural Revolution to be country teachers or farmhands. Chen Kaige’s Huang tudi (1984; Yellow Earth), Da yuebing (1986; The Big Parade), Haizi wang (1987; King of the Children), and Bian zou bian chang (1991; Life on a String) emphasized China’s wide-open spaces and bright landscape colours. Similar impulses, with variations of style and theme, shaped the work of Zhang Yimou (Hong gaoliang [1987; Red Sorghum], Ju Dou [1990], Dahong denglong gaogao gua [1991; Raise the Red Lantern], Qiu Ju da guansi [1992; The Story of Qiu Ju]) and Tian Zhuangzhuang (Lie chang zha sha [1985; On the Hunting Ground], Daoma zei [1986; Horse Thief]).

As these filmmakers, and others, gained international recognition, their work became both more commercial and more political and thus more controversial in the eyes of Chinese authorities. The Cultural Revolution became a subject in Chen’s Bawang bieji (1993; Farewell My Concubine), Zhang’s Huozhe (1994; To Live), and Tian’s Lan fenzheng (1993; The Blue Kite), the last of which caused the filmmaker to be banned temporarily from film work. Both Chen and Zhang turned to what may have appeared a less-contentious historical subject, Shanghai in the early 20th century, although possibly with allegorical purpose, in the former’s Fengyue (1996; Temptress Moon, 1996) and the latter’s Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao (1995; Shanghai Triad). As these filmmakers continued to develop in new directions (and Tian was able to resume film work), younger directors identified as a Sixth Generation, often working independently of the official studios, focused on contemporary urban subjects, depicting the social issues involved in the rapid growth of China’s cities. Taiwan

Another aspect of Chinese-language cinema developed on the island of Taiwan, off the coast of China. The government of Taiwan controlled filmmaking there during the middle decades of the 20th century, but by the early 1980s audiences were shunning local films in favour of action pictures from Hong Kong. A younger group of directors in Taiwan, similar to the Fifth Generation in their desire to break with old traditions, emerged under the banner of New Taiwanese Cinema. At the forefront was Hou Hsiao-hsien, who set his early works, such as Tongnian wangshi (1985; The Time to Live and the Time to Die) and Lainlian feng chen (1986; Dust in the Wind) in rural southern Taiwan. He developed a distinctive style emphasizing long shots and long takes, with little camera movement. When government censorship restrictions were lifted in the late 1980s, Hou launched a remarkable trilogy on Taiwan’s history during the Japanese occupation from its beginning in 1895 through World War II and the handover in 1945 of Taiwan to the Chinese Nationalist government: Beiqing chengshi (1989; City of Sadness), Hsimeng rensheng (1993; The Puppetmaster), and Haonan Haonu (1995; Good Men, Good Women). His later works include a sumptuous period piece set in 19th-century Shanghai, Hai shan hua (1998; Flowers of Shanghai), his first film to be set outside Taiwan.

Another leading figure of New Taiwanese Cinema was Edward Yang (Yang Dechang), whose work centred on the contemporary changes of urban culture in Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei. Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian (1991; A Brighter Summer Day) took on Taiwan’s political history in a fashion similar to Hou’s trilogy. Yi yi (2000), a compelling portrait of a family and society, was honoured by the National Society of Film Critics in the United States as the year’s best film released there. Tsai Ming-liang, a filmmaker originally from Malaysia, continued Yang’s scrutiny of contemporary urban mores, albeit with more emphasis on socially marginal characters, in films such as Ching shao nien na cha (1993; Rebels of the Neon God), Aiqing wansui (1994; Vive l’amour), and Ni nei pien chi tien (2001; What Time Is It There?). Hong Kong

A third Chinese-language film culture emerged in Hong Kong. During the 1960s Hong Kong filmmakers became famous throughout Asia for martial-arts action films. One of the leading directors in the genre was King Hu (Hu Jinquan), who became renowned for films such as Da zui xia (1966; Come Drink with Me), which featured a female warrior. In the 1980s the martial-arts style was extended to crime and gangster films in works such as Diexue shuang xiong (1989; The Killer), directed by John Woo (Wu Yusen). On the strength of his kinetic style, Woo moved to Hollywood and became a major director of action blockbusters in the 1990s. Hong Kong’s “new wave” during the 1980s also produced sumptuous historical melodramas such as Yanzhi hou (1987; Rouge) by Stanley Kwan (Guan Jinpang) and social problem films such as Touben nuhai (1982; Boat People), concerning refugees from Vietnam, and the autobiographical Haktou tsauhan (1990; Song of the Exile), both by Ann Hui (Xu Anhua).

In the 1990s filmmaker Wong Kar-wai drew international acclaim for the Hong Kong style with a series of films made with the Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Their bright palette and swift cutting and camera movement were on display in such works as A-Fei zhengzhuan (1990; Days of Being Wild), Dongxie xidu (1994; Ashes of Time), Chongquing senlin (1994; Chungking Express), and Duoluo tianshi (1995; Fallen Angels). Later, more intimate films, set outside Hong Kong or in the past, were Chungguang zhaxie (1997; Happy Together), in which a gay couple from Hong Kong travel to Argentina, and Huayang nianhua (2000; In the Mood for Love), set in the 1960s. Iran

The most surprising rise to prominence of a little-known national cinema during the late 20th century, at least from an outside perspective, occurred in the case of Iran. In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution (1978–79), some 200 film theatres were destroyed in a campaign against secular media and Western cultural influence, but religious authorities eventually decreed that motion pictures could be valuable for educational purposes. With Hollywood films banned, Iranian filmmakers developed a quiet, contemplative style that mixed actuality and fiction and often involved children as performers and centres of the narrative. Abbas Kiarostami, who before the revolution had made short films for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Iran, gained international acclaim as an avatar of this distinctly Iranian style with films such as Khaneh-ye doost kojast? (1987; Where Is My Friend’s House?), Zendegi va digar hich (1992; And Life Goes On), Zir-e darakhtan-e zitun (1994; Through the Olive Trees), Ta’m e guilass (1997; Taste of Cherry), and Bad mara khahad bourd (1999; The Wind Will Carry Us). For Nema-ye Nazdik (1989; Close-Up), people who were involved in an actual public incident restaged the events for Kiarostami’s camera, a further innovation that filmmakers in Iran and elsewhere emulated.

Moshen Makhmalbaf made his name as a director of such films as Salaam Cinema (1995), Nun va goldoon (1996; A Moment of Innocence), and the visually stunning Gabbeh (1996), and he also served as screenwriter and producer for other family members. Samira Makhmalbaf, his daughter, made a striking debut as a director at age 17 with Sib (1998; The Apple), and Marzieh Meshkini, his wife, made the film Roozi keh zan shodam (2000; The Day I Became a Woman), her first. Other Iranian filmmakers whose works have had international success include Jafar Panahi, with Badkonak-e sefid (1995; The White Balloon), Dayereh (2000; The Circle), and Offside (2006), and Majid Majidi, director of Bachela-Ya aseman (1997; Children of Heaven) and Rang-e khoda (1999; The Color of Heaven). Japan

At the end of the 20th century, Japan’s long-established film culture was characterized by individual work rather than by dominant movements, as had been the case in the past. As in France, filmmakers of the Japanese New Wave era of the 1960s continued to be active, with Imamura Shohei making Unagi (1997; The Eel) and Kenzo Sensei (1998; Dr. Akagi) and Oshima Nagisa directing Gohatto (1999; Taboo). An important newcomer to film in the late 1980s was Kitano Takeshi, a popular television figure who began to write, direct, edit, and star as lead performer—often as a gangster or a policeman—in his films, which included Sonatine (1993), Hana-bi (1997; Fireworks), Kikujiro (1999), Brother (2000), and Zatoichi (2003). Koreeda Hirokazu made his directoral debut with Maboroshi no hikari (1995; Maborosi) and followed with Wandafuru raifu (1998; After Life). European cinema

At the end of the 20th century, the notion of national cinemas had become problematic in many of the traditional film cultures of western Europe. This is not to say that national cinemas had ceased to exist—the situation of France would contradict such an assertion—but that the trends toward international coproduction and toward filmmakers and performers working in different countries and languages had reached a stage where coherent film movements identified with a particular national culture, such as Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, or New German Cinema, had become difficult to identify or sustain. A film such as Heaven (2002), cowritten by the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski, with Tom Tykwer from Germany as director, set in Italy and spoken in Italian and English by American and Australian lead actors, seemed the rule rather than the exception. Even as many countries produced substantial numbers of films, the idea of nationality was exemplified more by singular individuals than by wider groupings.

Among the outstanding figures of European cinema were Pedro Almodóvar of Spain, Manoel de Oliveira of Portugal, Théo Angelopoulos of Greece, Aki Kaurismäki of Finland, and Nanni Moretti of Italy. Almodóvar, who had broken sexual taboos in his early work, entered a mature period of great human subtlety and complexity in the 1990s and 2000s with such works as La flor de mi secreto (1995; The Flower of My Secret), Carne trémula (1997; Live Flesh), Todo sobre mi madre (1999; All About My Mother), and Habla con ella (2002; Talk to Her). Oliveira—who was born in 1908, made his first films in the 1930s, and was artistically restricted for years by the Portuguese dictatorship—was still directing at age 100. He had perhaps his most productive period after 1990, with such films as Vale Abraão (1993; Abraham’s Valley) and Viagem ao princípio do mundo (1997; Voyage to the Beginning of the World), the latter starring Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni in his last screen role. Angelopoulos, a master of Greek cinema since his first feature film in 1970, made several ambitious works fusing the personal and the historical: To Vlemma tou Odyssea (1995; Ulysses’ Gaze) and Mia aeoniotita ke mia mera (1998; Eternity and a Day). Kaurismäki, one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan filmmakers, returned to Finnish themes in Kauas pilvet karkaavat (1996; Drifting Clouds) and Mies vailla menneisyyttä (2002; The Man Without a Past). Moretti became a popular figure in Italy by writing, directing, and performing in his own films, of which Caro diario (1993; Dear Diary) was exemplary.

The one concerted effort to launch a film movement in Europe came from a filmmakers’ collective in Denmark, which unveiled a doctrine called Dogme 95 (Dogma 95) at the Cannes film festival in 1998. The 10 rules of the Dogme manifesto argued against technological gadgetry in cinema and for a straightforward realism in style and content. A leader of the group was Lars von Trier, a Danish director whose films include the English-language Breaking the Waves (1996). The first Dogme work, Festen (1998; The Celebration), directed by Thomas Vinterberg, was well received, and dozens of films were subsequently released under the movement’s banner, including works by American and French directors as well as by Danes. France

In France, cinema remained at the forefront of cultural and intellectual life, and French film and television companies managed to finance a rich and varied group of filmmakers while also helping to support production in such other regions as eastern Europe and Africa. Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda remained active after nearly half a century as directors, and French New Wave figures, including Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer, continued to make films. In 2001 alone, among the year’s most innovative and challenging films were Rohmer’s L’Anglaise et le duc (The Lady and the Duke), Rivette’s Va savoir (Who Knows?), and Godard’s Éloge de l’amour (In Praise of Love).

New works by mature and emerging French filmmakers played a central role in international art cinema at the turn of the 21st century. A partial list of prominent names, with their films, would include Olivier Assayas, director of L’Eau froide (1994; Cold Water), Irma Vep (1996), and Fin août, début septembre (1998; Late August, Early September); Claire Denis, with Nénette et Boni (1996; Nenette and Boni) and Beau travail (1999; Good Work); Bruno Dumont, who made La Vie de Jésus (1997; The Life of Jesus) and L’Humanité (1999); Catherine Breillat, director of Romance (1999) and Sex Is Comedy (2002); and Raúl Ruiz, who worked in France after going into exile from Chile in 1973, with Trois vies et une seule mort (1996; Three Lives and Only One Death) and Le Temps retrouvé (1999; Time Regained). French-language cinema also saw the emergence in Belgium of the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, whose films La Promesse (1996; The Promise), Rosetta (1999), Le Fils (2002; The Son), and L’Enfant (2005; The Child) examined the moral quandaries involved in issues of employment and unemployment in contemporary Europe. Great Britain

After a period in which filmmaking appeared to be subordinated to television production, British cinema experienced a revival in the 1990s. Two major figures whose careers followed this pattern were Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, who began their careers as film directors, worked primarily in television during the 1970s and ’80s, and then resumed film production. Leigh’s works include High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1991), Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), and Topsy-Turvy (1999). Loach directed Riff-Raff (1991), Raining Stones (1993), Ladybird Ladybird (1994), Land and Freedom (1995), and My Name Is Joe (1998), among other films, all of which centred on themes of working-class life. Loach set several of his films in Scotland; other works on Scottish subjects included Trainspotting (1996), directed by Danny Boyle, and Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002).

British filmmakers also were active in alternative cinema practices. A founder of the black British Sankofa workshop, Isaac Julien made documentary and fiction films including Looking for Langston (1989), Young Soul Rebels (1991), Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996), and BaadAsssss Cinema (2002), the latter a documentary on 1970s American blaxploitation films. Derek Jarman’s films dealt with the subject of male homosexuality; his Blue (1993) was a remarkable work showing only a monochrome blue screen while on the sound track he discussed the failure of his eyesight as a result of AIDS. Eastern Europe and Russia

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the film cultures of Russia and the former Soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe experienced dramatic transformations. Formerly controlled and supported by the state, film production shifted into private hands. With the boundaries that previously had divided eastern from western Europe now torn down, filmmakers were freed to work where they pleased or where opportunities existed. A prominent example was the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, who in 1991 made La Double Vie de Véronique (The Double Life of Veronique), which suggested a mysterious symmetry between two women, one living in Poland and the other in France. Kieslowski shifted his filmmaking work to France, where he made the important Trois couleurs (“Three Colours”) trilogy—Bleu (1993; Blue), Rouge (1994; Red), and Blanc (1994; White)—before his death in 1996.

Krzysztof Kieślowski on the set of Blue (1993).Miramax/The Kobal Collection

In Russia a significant figure to emerge was Aleksandr Sokurov, whose early films had been “shelved,” or prohibited from public screening, until 1987. Sokurov’s first film to be widely seen internationally was Mat’ i syn (1997; Mother and Son). In 2002 he made Russki kovcheg (Russian Ark), a 96-minute tour of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, in a single take without cuts, the longest Steadicam shot ever recorded. Aleksey Balabanov directed both crime dramas—Brat (1997; Brother) and a sequel, Brat II (2000; Brother II)—and meditative historical works, including Pro ourodov I lioudiei (1998; Of Freaks and Men).

Filmmaking was inevitably affected by the prolonged, bitter, and brutal breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Under the circumstances, every film from the region was likely to come under attack from some group as a work of propaganda. This was the case for the work of Emir Kusturica, who had gained wide recognition for his films in the 1980s but caused controversy in the 1990s with Underground (1995) and Crna macka, beli macor (1998; Black Cat, White Cat). Australia, New Zealand, and Canada

In the late 20th century it sometimes seemed that Australian and New Zealand filmmakers were more active in Hollywood than in their home countries. Many Hollywood blockbusters, with leading actors such as Mel Gibson and prominent directors such as Phillip Noyce, had a strong Australian influence. The most prominent figure to remain outside the Hollywood orbit was Jane Campion, born in New Zealand and based in Australia, whose films include Sweetie (1989), An Angel at My Table (1990), The Piano (1993), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and Holy Smoke (1999). In New Zealand Peter Jackson made his mark with the horror comedies Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1990), Braindead (1992; released in the United States as Dead Alive), and The Frighteners (1996), along with an impressive art film about a 1950s murder case, Heavenly Creatures (1994). He directed one of the most extensive projects in Hollywood’s history, an adaptation of the classic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by English author J.R.R. Tolkien. All three parts of Tolkien’s trilogy were shot at the same time in New Zealand and later released as The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). He also cowrote and directed a remake of King Kong (2005).

Peter Jackson directing Naomi Watts in a scene from King Kong (2005).Universal Pictures Inc./Wing Nut Films

The situation was the same for English-language filmmakers in Canada, although Hollywood’s lure affected Canadian performers more than directors. Canadian filmmakers of note included Atom Egoyan, whose work in the 1990s included The Adjuster (1991), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Felicia’s Journey (1999), and David Cronenberg, who in the same period made Naked Lunch (1991), M. Butterfly (1993), Crash (1996), and eXistenZ (1999). Filmmaking in Quebec, which had gone through a strong period in the 1970s and ’80s, made a lesser impression in the 1990s. Denys Arcand, a key figure of the earlier period with such works as Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986; The Decline of the American Empire) and Jésus de Montréal (1989; Jesus of Montreal), made Love and Human Remains (1993) and Stardom (2000) in English. His Les Invasions barbares (2003; The Barbarian Invasions) won an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Mexico

Mexican cinema was representative of many national film cultures that had, as it were, one foot in its own language and film traditions and the other connected to influences from and opportunities in Hollywood. The actor Alfonso Arau directed a highly popular film based on a novel written by his wife, Laura Esquivel, Como agua para chocolate (1992; Like Water for Chocolate). He then went on to be a director in American film and television. Alfonso Cuarón, who had been working in Hollywood, returned to Mexico to direct the acclaimed Y tu mamá también (2001; “And Your Mother Too”). Among those who remained in Mexico were Arturo Ripstein, director, among other works, of Profundo carmesi (1996; Deep Crimson) and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999; No One Writes to the Colonel), and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who made Amores perros (2000) and Babel (2006). The success of nearly all these works as international art films was a sign that, despite Hollywood’s dominance of the world film marketplace, there was still a place for distinctive national visions in cinema at the turn of the 21st century. United States

In the last years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st, the idea of “synergy” dominated the motion-picture industry in the United States, and an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions pursued this ultimately elusive concept. Simply put, synergy implied that consolidating related media and entertainment properties under a single umbrella could strengthen every facet of a coordinated communications empire. Motion pictures, broadcast television, cable and satellite systems, radio networks, theme parks, newspapers and magazines, book publishers, manufacturers of home entertainment products, sports teams, Internet service providers—these were among the different elements that came together in various corporate combinations under the notion that each would boost the others. News Corporation Ltd., originally an Australian media company, started the trend by acquiring Twentieth Century–Fox in 1985. The Japanese manufacturing giant Sony Corporation acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., from The Coca-Cola Company in 1989. Another Japanese firm, Matsushita, purchased Universal Studios (as part of Music Corporation of America, or MCA) in 1990; it then was acquired by Seagram Company Ltd. (1995), became part of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (2000), and merged with the National Broadcasting Co., Inc. (2004), a subsidiary of General Electric Company. Paramount Pictures, as Paramount Communications, Inc., became part of Viacom Inc. In perhaps the most striking of all ventures, Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. to become Time Warner Inc., which in turn came together with the Internet company America Online (AOL) to form AOL Time Warner in 2001. The company then changed its name again, back to Time Warner Inc., in 2003, a year after the company suffered a quarterly loss that was at that time the largest ever reported by an American company. The Disney Company itself became an acquirer, adding Miramax Films, the television network American Broadcasting Company, and the cable sports network ESPN, among other properties. The volume of corporate reshuffling and realignment had an undoubted impact on the studios involved. Nevertheless, the potential for success of such synergistic entities—and, more particularly, the positive or negative effect on their motion-picture units—remained an open question.

It could well be argued, however, that motion-picture companies’ corporate links with the wider media world and emergent communications forms such as the Internet fostered receptivity to new technologies that rapidly transformed film production in the 1990s and into the 21st century. As early as 1982, the Disney film Tron made extensive use of computer-generated images, which were introduced in a short special-effects sequence in which a human character is deconstructed into electronic particles and reassembled inside a computer. A few years later computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into a computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000.

In the 1990s, computer-generated imagery made rapid strides and became a standard feature not only of Hollywood action-adventure films but also of nearly any work that required special visual effects. Examples of landmark films utilizing the new technologies included Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993); Independence Day (1996), directed by Roland Emmerich; and The Matrix (1999), written and directed by Larry (later Lana) Wachowski and Andy (later Lilly) Wachowski. In Spielberg’s film, based on a best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, a number of long-extinct dinosaur species are re-created through genetic engineering. At the special-effects firm Industrial Light and Magic, models of the dinosaurs were scanned into computers and animated realistically to produce the first computer-generated images of lifelike action, rather than fantasy scenes. In Independence Day, a film combining the science-fiction and disaster genres in which giant alien spaceships attack Earth, an air battle was programmed in a computer so that each individual aircraft maneuvered, fired its weapons, and dueled with other flying objects in intricate patterns of action that would have been too time-consuming and costly to achieve by traditional special-effects means. By the end of the 1990s, the developing new technologies were displayed perhaps more fully than ever before in the Wachowskis’ spectacular film, in which the computer functions as both a central subject and a primary visual tool. For a scene in which actor Keanu Reeves appears to be dodging bullets that pass by him in a visible slow-motion trajectory, a computer program determined what motion-picture and still images were to be photographed, and then the computer assembled the images into a complete visual sequence.

In part through the expensive and lavish effects attained through the new technologies, American cinema at the end of the 20th century sustained and even widened its domination of the world film marketplace. Domestically, the expansion of ancillary products and venues—which during the 1990s were dominated by the sale and rental of video cassettes and then DVDs for home viewing as well as by additional cable and satellite outlets for movie presentation—produced new revenues that were becoming equal to, or in some cases more important than, income from theatrical exhibition. Nevertheless, exhibition outlets continued to grow, with new “megaplex” theatres offering several dozen cinemas, while distribution strategies called for opening major commercial films on 1,000 or more—sometimes as many as 3,000 by the late 1990s—screens across the country. The competition for box-office returns became something of a spectator sport, with the media reporting every Monday on the previous weekend’s multimillion-dollar grosses and ranking the top-10 films by ticket sales. The exhibition environment seemed to demand more than ever that film production be geared to the tastes of teenage spectators who frequented the suburban mall cinemas on weekends, and commentators within the industry as well as outside it observed what they regarded as the diminished quality of mainstream films. As if reflecting that judgment, in 1996 only one major studio film, Jerry Maguire, was among the five nominees for best picture at the annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards ceremony (the other nominees were an American independent film, Fargo; an Australian work, Shine; a film from Britain, Secrets & Lies; and the winner, an international production with British stars and based on a novel written by a Canadian, The English Patient).

Leonardo DiCaprio (left) and Jack Nicholson in The Departed (2006), directed by Martin Scorsese.© 2006 Miramax Films; all rights reservedThe motion-picture industry’s emphasis on pleasing the youth audience with special effects-laden blockbusters and genre works such as teen-oriented horror films and comedies inevitably diminished the role of directors as dominant figures in the creative process, further reducing the status that Hollywood directors had attained in the auteur-oriented 1960s and ’70s. Still, more than a handful of filmmakers, several of them veterans of that earlier era, maintained their prestige as artists practicing in a commercial medium. Two of the most prominent, who had launched their careers in the early 1970s, were Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. In addition to Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s works in the 1990s include Schindler’s List (1993, winner of an Academy Award for best picture), Amistad (1997), and Saving Private Ryan (1998), with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Munich (2005) among his subsequent films. Scorsese directed GoodFellas (1990), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Departed (2006; winner of an Academy Award for best picture).

The actor-director Clint Eastwood was also prolific in this period, winning the best picture Academy Award with Unforgiven (1992) and directing such other films as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004; Academy Award for best picture and best director), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and Gran Torino (2008). Stanley Kubrick died before the release of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), his first film since Full Metal Jacket (1987). Two decades passed between Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998).

A succeeding generation of filmmakers who could claim the status of auteur included such figures as David Lynch, Oliver Stone, James Cameron, and Spike Lee. Lynch’s work in the 1990s and beyond includes Lost Highway (1996), The Straight Story (1999), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006). Stone, best known for politically oriented films such as JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), and W. (2008), also made Natural Born Killers (1994), U-Turn (1997), and Any Given Sunday (1999). Cameron’s Titanic (1997), re-creating the 1912 sinking of an ocean liner on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg, won the Academy Award for best picture and broke domestic and worldwide box-office records. Lee, the most prominent among a group of young African American filmmakers who began working in mainstream cinema, was best known for Do the Right Thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992); his many other films include Crooklyn (1994) and Summer of Sam (1999), along with documentaries such as 4 Little Girls (1997), concerning the deaths of four young black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., church in 1963, and When the Levees Broke (2006), about New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Among newcomers who emerged during the 1990s, Paul Thomas Anderson stood out with Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and There Will Be Blood (2008).

Denzel Washington in Malcolm X (1992).David Lee/Warner Brothers, Inc.

Another significant development in late 20th-century American cinema was the emergence of a self-designated independent film movement. Its origins perhaps lay in the perceived diminution of opportunities for personal filmmaking in the post-1970s commercial industry. To take up the slack, organizations such as the Independent Feature Project and the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, were founded to encourage and promote independent work. A major breakthrough was achieved when an American independent film, sex, lies and videotape (1989), the first feature by Steven Soderbergh, won the top prize at the Cannes festival in France. (Soderbergh went on, like Spike Lee and others, to work on both independent and mainstream projects; he won an Academy Award as best director for Traffic [2000].) In the 1990s independent directors began to develop projects that were closer in style to popular Hollywood genres such as the gangster film and post-World War II film noir. These proved exceedingly popular with Cannes festival juries, who awarded their top prize to David Lynch’s Wild at Heart in 1990, Barton Fink by the Coen brothers in 1991, and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in 1994. Tarantino’s other films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004). Among the Coen brothers’ works were Miller’s Crossing (1990), Fargo (1995), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), and No Country for Old Men (2007; Academy Award for best picture).

Beyond this genre orientation, which cemented the popularity of independent films for many in the mainstream audience, the independent movement fostered what came to be called niche filmmaking, which generated works growing out of ethnic and identity movements in contemporary American culture. Among these were films by African American, Native American, and Chicano and Chicana filmmakers, as well as works representing feminist and gay and lesbian cultural viewpoints and experience. Documentary filmmaking from these and other perspectives also thrived in the independent world. Independent nonfiction films of significance included Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988), an exploration of a miscarriage of justice in a Dallas murder case; Hoop Dreams (1994), by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert, concerning the struggles of two young African American basketball hopefuls in Chicago; Crumb (1994), Terry Zwigoff’s portrait of the underground comic book artist Robert Crumb; and Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder’s rediscovery of old-time popular Cuban musicians. Robert Sklar

Citation Information

Article Title: History of the motion picture

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 08 January 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture

Access Date: August 23, 2019

Additional Reading General histories

The history of motion pictures is discussed generally in Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of the Movies, rev. ed. (1979), an influential history; Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman, Flashback: A Brief History of Film, 4th ed. (2001), a concise overview with an emphasis on American film; Robert Sklar, A World History of Film (2002), a comprehensive survey that examines principal films, directors, and national cinemas; Paul Rotha, with Richard Griffith, The Film till Now, new ed. (1967), a substantial history, though now dimmed by age and a lack of critical perspective; Pierre Leprohon, Histoire du cinéma, 2 vol. (1961–63), a useful reference work of names, dates, titles, and events; Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies, 4th ed. (1986); David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film (1981), a wide-ranging historical survey of international film; Eric Rhode, A History of the Cinema from Its Origins to 1970 (1976, reprinted 1985), an international critical history providing detailed though opinionated coverage; Kenneth Macgowan, Behind the Screen: The History and Techniques of the Motion Picture (1965), a dated but still valuable history by an industry insider; and Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia, 4th ed. (2001), an informative reference source. Perhaps the most exhaustive study of American film history is Charles Harpole (ed.), History of the American Cinema (1990– ). Historical studies of specific periods

Early developments are studied in Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture, 2 vol. (1926, reissued in 1 vol., 1986), a romantic account covering the period to 1925, with emphasis on American film between 1890 and 1915; Michael Chanan, The Dream That Kicks: The Prehistory and Early Years of Cinema in Britain (1980), an extraordinary study of the cultural and ideological “site” of cinema at the moment of its birth; Kevin Brownlow, Hollywood, the Pioneers (1979), a systematic treatment of the subject through the 1920s, copiously illustrated by John Kobal; John Fell (ed.), Film Before Griffith (1983); and Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (1980, reprinted 1983).

Further developments are presented in Georges Sadoul, Histoire générale du cinéma, 6 vol. in varied editions (1973–75), a detailed study of the epoch of silent film; Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By (1968), a well-illustrated study of American silent films and stars, based on interviews with survivors; John Kobal, Hollywood: The Years of Innocence (1985), a pictorial work on the period; William K. Everson, American Silent Film (1978, reissued 1998); Graham Petrie, Hollywood Destinies: European Directors in America, 1922–1931 (1985); and Benjamin B. Hampton, A History of the Movies (1931, reissued as History of the American Film Industry from Its Beginnings to 1931, 1970). An excellent, well-researched account of the coming of sound is found in Alexander Walker, The Shattered Silents: How the Talkies Came to Stay (1978, reissued 1986). See also Evan William Cameron (ed.), Sound and the Cinema: The Coming of Sound to American Film (1980), an anthology of scholarly essays and reminiscences; Leonard Quart and Albert Auster, American Films and Society Since 1945 (1984), a brief, penetrating study; and William Luhr (ed.), World Cinema Since 1945 (1987). Historical and critical studies of national film movements

British filmmaking is the subject of Roy Armes, A Critical History of the British Cinema (1978); Rachael Low, The History of the British Film, 7 vol. (1948–79), a detailed study of the silent film; Ernest Betts, The Film Business: A History of British Cinema, 1896–1972 (1973), a standard, compact history; Alexander Walker, Hollywood UK: The British Film Industry in the Sixties (1974; also published as Hollywood, England, 1974, reprinted 1986); George Perry, The Great British Picture Show, rev. ed. (1985), a popular concise history; and Sarah Street, British National Cinema (1997).

For France, see Richard Abel, French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915–1929 (1984), a definitive scholarly study of avant-garde and commercial cinema of the era, superbly illustrated; James Monaco, The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette (1976, reprinted 1980), an excellent critical study; Georges Sadoul, French Film (1953, reissued 1972); Roy Armes, French Cinema (1985); and Alan Williams, Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking (1992).

For Germany, see Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947, reissued with additions, 1974), a psychological, sociological, and political analysis; David Stewart Hull, Film in the Third Reich: A Study of the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (1969, reissued 1973), an exploration of the cinema’s role in Nazi propaganda; David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (1983); Julian Petley, Capital and Culture: German Cinema, 1933–45 (1979), a discussion of the economic and social structure of the Nazi film industry; Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt (1969, reissued 1973; originally published in French, 1965; new enlarged French ed., 1981), a study of the influence of the arts of painting, drama, and the novel on the cinema; and Eric Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time: Reflections on the Twenty Years Since Oberhausen (1984), a scholarly account of the New German Cinema and its historical-economic contexts.

Italian filmmaking is the subject of Pierre Leprohon, The Italian Cinema (1972; originally published in French, 1966); James Hay, Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy: The Passing of the Rex (1987); Mira Liehm, Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the Present (1984), an informative though sometimes eccentric critical study; Roy Armes, Patterns of Realism (1971, reprinted 1986), a standard study of the Neorealist cinema; and Peter Bondanella, Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present (1983), a definitive scholarly analysis.

Films from the Soviet Union and eastern European countries are the subject of Jay Leyda, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film, 3rd ed. (1983), a broad, authoritative study of developments beginning with tsarist times; Mira Liehm and Antonín J. Liehm, The Most Important Art: Eastern European Film After 1945 (1977), a survey of Soviet, Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Yugoslav, East German, Romanian, and Bulgarian cinema, illustrated with many rare stills; Ronald Holloway, The Bulgarian Cinema (1986), a well-illustrated study; Peter Hames, The Czechoslovak New Wave (1985); Graham Petrie, History Must Answer to Man: The Contemporary Hungarian Cinema (1978); and Daniel J. Goulding, Liberated Cinema: The Yugoslav Experience (1985), a critical history of the postwar period.

For other European countries, see Peter Cowie, Swedish Cinema (1966), and Swedish Cinema from Ingeborg Holm to Fanny and Alexander (1985); and Peter Besas, Behind the Spanish Lens: Spanish Cinema Under Fascism and Democracy (1985).

For a survey of Australian movies, see Graham Shirley and Brian Adams, Australian Cinema, the First Eighty Years (1983), a standard scholarly history covering developments to 1975; and Brian McFarlane, Australian Cinema 1970–1985 (1987), a valuable account of Australia’s unprecedented film explosion.

Filmmaking in Asian and African countries is discussed in Noël Burch, To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, rev. and ed. by Annette Michelson (1979), a classical study of the film form and its misinterpretations in the West; Tadao Sato, Currents in Japanese Cinema, trans. from Japanese (1982), original essays with a filmography to 1981; Audie Bock, Japanese Film Directors (1978, reprinted 1985), a scrupulously researched critical study of 10 directors spanning the history of the industry; Thomas Weisser and Yuko Mihara Weisser, Japanese Cinema: The Essential Handbook, 4th rev. ed. (1998); Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, expanded ed. (1982); Jay Leyda, Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (1972); Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, Indian Film, 2nd ed. (1980), an authoritative study; T.M. Ramachandran (ed.), 70 Years of Indian Cinema, 1913–1983 (1985), a well-illustrated, extended history; Roy Armes, Third World Film Making and the West (1987), a historical overview that also includes discussions of Latin American cinema; and Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, new rev. ed. (1999).

Book-length works on Latin America, Cuba, and Mexico include Jorge A. Schnitman, Film Industries in Latin America: Dependency and Development (1984), an economic analysis from the silent era through the 1980s; Randal Johnson and Robert Stam (eds.), Brazilian Cinema (1982), a definitive English-language history; Michael Chanan, The Cuban Image: Cinema and Cultural Politics in Cuba (1985); Carl J. Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society, 1896–1980 (1982), a scholarly critical history; and Chon A. Noriega (ed.), Visible Nations: Latin American Cinema and Video (2000).

The cinema of the United States is the subject of Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Movies (1975); Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, a Critical History, expanded ed. (1968, reissued 1974), a detailed study with emphasis on trends and audience preference; David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Janet Staiger, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (1985); Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System (1985); Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 (1968, reprinted 1985), a classic definition of the auteur theory and its critical application to American films and filmmakers; and Tino Balio (ed.), The American Film Industry, rev. ed. (1985), an anthology of historical scholarship and primary documents from the origins to the 1980s. Genre studies

Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (1981), examines prevalent styles and forms. Nonfiction films are discussed in Richard Meran Barsam, Nonfiction Film: A Critical History (1973), which focuses on British and American documentaries; Richard Meran Barsam (ed.), Nonfiction Film: Theory and Criticism (1976); and Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, rev. ed. (1983). War themes are explored in Craig W. Campbell, Reel America and World War I: A Comprehensive Filmography and History of Motion Pictures in the United States, 1914–1920 (1985); and Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (1986).

Studies of the western, crime movies, and film noir include William K. Everson, The Hollywood Western: 90 Years of Cowboys and Indians, Train Robbers, Sheriffs and Gunslingers, and Assorted Heroes and Desperados (1992, rev. ed. of A Pictorial History of the Western Film, 1969); Jim Kitses, Horizons West: Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: Studies of Authorship Within the Western (1969); Jon Tuska, The Filming of the West (1976); Lawrence Alloway, Violent America: The Movies, 1946–1964 (1971); Carlos Clarens, Crime Movies: From Griffith to The Godfather and Beyond (1980), a historical cross-genre survey; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward (eds.), Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1979), a critical reference work; Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (1981, reprinted 1983), an in-depth study; and Jon Tuska, Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective (1984). Experimental cinema is the subject of Sheldon Renan, An Introduction to the American Underground Film (1967). The social-issue movie is explored in Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film: Madness, Despair, and Politics from the Depression to the Fifties (1981). For feminist studies of Hollywood films, see Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (1987); and E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (1983), which also covers independent films.

Two surveys of specific genres are Kalton C. Lahue, Continued Next Week: A History of the Moving Picture Serial (1964), and World of Laughter: The Motion Picture Comedy Short, 1910–1930 (1966, reprinted 1972). Other works on comedy include Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns (1975); Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, 2nd ed. (1979), a thematic study of silent and sound comedies and the relationship between intellectual content and comic form; and Andrew Horton (ed.), Comedy/Cinema/Theory (1991).

Musicals are discussed in John Kobal, A History of Movie Musicals: Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance, rev. ed. (1983), an extremely well-represented international survey; Ted Sennett, Hollywood Musicals (1981, reprinted 1985); Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical (1982); Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (1987, reissued 1989), a definitive study of the structure of the genre; and Colin Larkin, The Virgin Encyclopedia of Stage and Film Musicals (1999).

For an overview of animated films, see Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (1980); Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928 (1982), a scholarly discussion of pre-Disney works; and Christopher Finch, The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms (1973, reprinted 1983), a richly illustrated study. David A. Cook