1920s Film Industry Research Paper

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Rene Acosta Ms. Harrell Eng. 3 10 March 2015 1920’s Film Industry The film industry reached its highest point of production between the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Reaching an astonishing average of 800 films a year, this time period’s production exceeds that of modern times. Major improvements to film production including the shifted focus to feature film as opposed to the shorts that were popular previously. Not only were the films themselves different from today but the movie-going experience differed greatly as well. Movie theaters, known then as “Picture Palaces” could seat over one thousand guests and accommodated an orchestra to accompany the silent film. Along with the formation of the studio system that would run the industry until the…show more content…
The five most important studios were Warner Brother Pictures, RKO Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox. These are considered to be the most important because they were able to show their produced films and had the most adequate space for production. Warner Bros. Pictures, founded in 1923 by four Polish brothers introduced “talkies” to the film industry. RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) was the smallest major studio but managed to say financially profitable and release films such as “King Kong” and “Citizen Kane”. Paramount studios was formed in 1927 and spent a total of one million dollars on property. MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was formed in 1924 and made iconic films such as “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz”. Fox Film, which later became 20th Century Fox, was made famous by its news production “Fox Movietone News”. Studios such as Republic Pictures and Disney Studios were known as “Poverty Row” studios due to their low…show more content…
However, the first feature length movie to incorporate dialogue was “The Jazz Singer” made in 1927. The ability to use dialogue in films would later shift focus on dialogue as opposed to visual creativity. The transition from silent film to sound film was not abrupt, many studios would release two versions of their movie, sound and silent. The movie often had minor scenes or sometimes endings changed to accommodate the format they were viewed in. An example of a movie with different endings would be 1930’s “All Quiet on the Western

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