American Cinema Part 2

American Blockbusters have shaped cinema and brought new techniques to the craft. The USA is also the most sucessful financelly  mkaing billions of dollars per annum. Cinematic landmarks and Box Office legends like Gone With the Wind (1939), Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009), The Lord of the Ring Trilogy (2001, 2002 & 2003) and The Star Wars Saga (1977-present).

To outline the Eras of Hollywood I mentioned earlier. The Silent Era (1900s-1929) was the first form of Cinema, originally invented by the French Lumiére Brothers in 1894. They invented film but it wasn't until the 1900s that film became an Industry and people started going to the Cinema regularly. The first great American Director was probably D. W. Griffith (1875-1948). He made the 2 giants of the Silent Era, those being The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intola


 rence (1916). The Golden Age of Hollywood (1920s-1960s) also known as Classical Hollywood, was when Talking and Colour came into Film. The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first film to have dialogue and singing. The Jazz Singer was a huge sucess and it was clear that "talkies" (as they became known) were the way forward. By the 1930s they had perfected Technicolour. The 1930s also saw some of the timeless classics of American Cinema like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Walt Disney's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and of course Gone With the Wind (1939) which became the highest grossing film in history, up to 1939 that is. The Golden Age also produced some of the greatest Historical Epics ever put to screen like The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1964) and many many more. The next era was New Hollywood (1950s-1980s). New Hollywood was when enormous sets, tragic romances and squeaky-clean content gave way to more realistic, violent, gritty, imaginative and smaller scale films. New Hollywood also produced some of the most acclaimed and iconic films ever made like Star Wars (1977), The Godfather (1972), The Graduate (1967), Rebel Without A Cause (1955), Taxi Driver (1978), The Terminator (1984) and so many more that I won't list here. The final era I'm gonna mention is The Digital Era (1990s-Present) or now. Modern Cinema was when digital and CGI effects became common place and nearly every strange things Directors and Writers could imagine became a reality. Films like Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1994), X-Men (2000), Harry Potter (2001), The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002 & 2003), I, Robot (2004), Avatar (2009), Life of Pi (2012) and Gravity (2013) pushed the boundaries of what you could do in a film and what strange and fantasy/sci-fi worlds you can bring to life through a screen.