Why Europe Has No Hollywood

these are the 50 highest grossing films of all time they are all American Hollywood rules the medium North America controls roughly onethird of the global movie and entertainment market British German Italian or French Cinema are not that relevant internationally not even in their own domestic markets before the pandemic us films held a market share of almost 70% in Europe but that hasn't always been the case Once Upon a Time Germany was the world capital of film and Europe had the biggest film industry on the planet European film companies were technological pioneers and on the Forefront

of artistic Innovations they held market shares in the US of up to 50% then the industry went from economic dominance to insignificance in the span of just a few years what happened happened how did Europe lose its Hollywood the answer lies somewhere between fascinating economics geography lobbying politics and an assassination bur understanding the complex history of film means learning a lot about technology and statistics if you like us love these kind of topics brilliant is just for you brilliant is a Hands-On platform for actively learning learning new skills and Fields like data science or statistics

there are thousands of lessons to choose from with new ones added every month so there's always something to explore drawing conclusions from Big sets of data can be quite challenging the brilliant course data analysis fundamentals shows you how to analyze real data with just a few bite-sized lessons no matter where you're starting from brilliant matches your skill level and interests by taking a quick quiz upon signing up you'll be directed to the content that's just right for you to try everything brilliant has to offer free for a full 30 days visit brilliant.org Fern or click

on the link in the description the first 200 of you will get 20% off brilliant's annual premium subscription in 1897 photographer Edward maybridge was hired to figure something out do horses have all four Hooves in the air while running he set up multiple cameras at a racetrack in St for California and in the end he created this the first film ever but the rise of film did not happen in the US it happened on the other side of the Atlantic two brothers shaped what would later become film as we know it today the lumier opened

the world's first commercial movie theater in 1895 in Paris one of the first movies they showed was this 50-second recording of a train arriving at a station Accord according to an urban legend people were so afraid of the train rushing towards them that they panicked and fled to the back of the Theater from here on the international rise of Cinema could not be stopped around 1900 film became a global phenomenon Cinema flourished in Denmark in the UK and Germany but it is two countries that dominated the film industry at the time France and Italy French

film pioneered in special effects the stage magician Georgie mes was the first who truly started experimenting with the possibilities of film Italy became famous for its historical epics the extensive use of extras and the immensely lavished sets established new production standards European Cinema was in great shape it quickly gained around 50% market share in the US the European film industry drove Technical Innovations like projection color processes and sound films they pushed new forms of content like like the Weekly News re the cartoon the seral and the feature film feature films are what you would call

today's movies 90 minutes plus big stories big promo big stars before that going to the cinema was watching a bunch of 15-minute stuff randomly mixed together think ancient YouTube back across the Atlantic American filmmakers find their Paradise if you want to shoot a movie you need light the easiest way to get some is the sun if you want to shoot many movies all year round you need a place where the sun shines a lot enter a small Los Angeles suburb called Hollywood California has a vast amount of different Landscapes relatively short distances between them and

perfect weather conditions but there was another reason where the American film industry flocked to California Thomas Addison Addison held over 1,000 patterns many among them related to making movies and he was not only a genius inventor but also a ruthless businessman using his numerous patents he formed the Motion Pictures patent company the mppc established a near Monopoly on all aspects of film making and it was Notorious for enforcing their patterns sometimes with the help of hired thugs before Hollywood the American film industry was mostly centered around New Jersey on the East Coast many independent filmmakers

chose to flee from the restrictions imposed by mppc to the West Californian judges were said to be less accepting of Edison's monopolistic practices by 1915 over 60% of All American Motion Picture companies were located in Hollywood this concentration will later prove to be an enormous Advantage meanwhile feature films turned out to be the industry's future longer better films meant higher ticket prices more people going to the cinema and much higher profits a race began and for a while the film Industries on both continents were toe to- toe making more and more feature films every year

then something happened it's the 28th of June 1914 a motorcade crosses through Saro it takes a wrong turn as the cars attempt to reverse a man steps up to the footboard of one of them holding a gun he shoots and kills the two passengers inside Arch Duke France Ferdinand air presumptive to the austr Hungarian throne and his wife Sophie Duchess of hornborg escalates World War I happens the first world war um had a huge effect because the Film Production was then nationalized in all countries which took part in this war this is Dr Marcus shlea

a film Professor who helped us understand the subject thousands of people marched to the front lines the next four years left Europe in Ruins but that's not the full answer far from it the European film industry was a life and well throughout the war people needed entertainment in dire times film became a tool of War they were government jobs the industry even grew a bit over the War years in some countries nonetheless after 1918 Hollywood had completely taken over how the following section is largely based on a fantastic paper by kabin Baker Link in the

description while war was raging in Europe the film industry in the US completely transformed almost all film became feature film and feature films started to dominate theatrical entertainment at large Regional markets became a national One National ones became a global one within the span of a few years it became in insanely expensive to make movies and therefore very risky since you couldn't be sure anybody would watch them but in turn the money you could make with a successful movie was unlike anything the entertainment world had ever seen Film Production started to be all about really

big bets smart entrepreneurs realized the potential of film anything with the word Motion Picture in it received enormous Investments Fox spent $92,000 on Film Production in 19 14 the studio ramed that number up to 4 million annually by 1917 a casual 40x jump with the help of wealthy New York investors Paramount was the result of the merger of several Regional Distributors and a big feature film production company with their United power they started rolling out massive National advertising campaigns promoting their stars and features as a result the company doubled its annual revenue within 2 years

Paramount pioneered a new thinking pay directors authors and writers whatever is necessary to get the best material possible the concentration of Film Production in a single place benefited the industry greatly as Talent could easily move around be scouted be hired the US film industry became the internet of the 1910s all this money pumped into the industry of the future so much hype all these startups almost none of them survived but those that did are some of the world's biggest companies today same here by the end of the 1910s almost everybody had gone bankrupt or been

absorbed except the so-called big five plus these three smaller ones it's no coincidence that you recognize almost all of them even today these production companies played the game like no one else they aggressively acquired theater chains and other distribution facilities in the US they vertically integrated so their share of the rapidly growing cake would be ever more enormous by 1930 the big five plus small 3 controlled roughly 95% of US Film production and distribution back to Europe even though the film industry here was still alive it didn't participate in the insane race that happened in

the US it was behind so so far behind in 1990 90% of all films screened in Europe Africa and Asia were American in South America it was close to 100% Market size mattered more than ever you needed to show your films to a lot of people to make your money back but the European market fell apart because of War related animosities and regulations as a result in the 1920s much of the European film industry collapsed there was one exception Germany the only place Hollywood hadn't conquered yet because no American movies entered the country during the

war between the first and the second world war there was the Wimer Republic and the Wimer Republic was still haunted by economic crisis but the need for entertainment and especially for Cinema as a factor of entertainment was huge and um in retrospect you can say that uh the Vima Republic era was the most uh fertile for German film history ever Studio bburg was built next to Berlin in 1912 the oldest largescale film studio in the world additionally German Film Production was unified under one big Studio UFA during the 20s many talented filmmakers from Germany emerged

like Friedrich wih mow and Fritz Lang their movies were successful all across the world Metropolis for example is still one of the most influential science fiction movies of all time it was the Golden Age of German Cinema in theory German movies could have flooded the US market since they were incredibly cheap because of national inflation but it was shortly after the war so the mood in the US towards German movies was postile at times also they were quite different from Hollywood Cinema and not a great fit for the American audience variety noted at the time

it is a curious fact about many German pictures they deal with freak stories and have no romance being entirely of men Hollywood found its classic style German movies were often expressionist after the war Germany had quot us to only allow a certain amount of American movies in their Market over time these quotas relaxed and Hollywood seized the opportunity the studios bought up independent theater chains and flooded the German Market with their films UFA got into serious financial trouble and got bailed out by Paramount and MGM in exchange for Distributing loads and loads of their movies

this meant that less German movies were shown which meant less Revenue which meant decline Hollywood effectively crippled its only serious rival then came this guy and sealed the deal over the following 12 years every film produced under the Nazi regime needed gbl's personal approval for release the industry officially prohibited juice leading to a significant Exodus of German film artists to Hollywood in consequence Los Angeles was called the new viar and the once thriving German Cinema lost its Talent the second world war destroyed Film Production all over the continent the effects of War on London for

example or later on Germany on the bombing of Berlin they destroyed a lot of those production facilities so by the end of the war Film Production and Studios had to be rebuilt in Europe Europe European Cinema wasn't dead though after the war had ended Hollywood lobbied for film to be viewed as an economic product not a cultural one the studios wanted to ensure there would not be National quotas or limits which would be incredibly damaging for them despite and all powerful Hollywood many European countries developed a flourishing film industry in the coming decades chinita in

Italy had great years and is currently having a comeback UK Cinema found enormous success in some franchises and is a key player in global Film Production today French Cinema is heavily subsidized and regularly produces International hits ramping up to be a major International locations Hub Germany manages to land International hits once in a while especially when dealing with its own history nonetheless it was never possible to focus um forces in the way that the American uh film Productions were able to do that in Hollywood but why not build a union of Film Production as the

continent did for the economies at large each country has a very specific needs very specific ideas and it's really hard to unify European Cinema as the North American Cinema could be unified by language and by certain themes and a certain mythology though there are attempts the European film agency Directors Association is trying to bring Europe's film industry closer together by 2030 they Invision European film to be globally competitive and culturally diverse and despite brexit the UK is steepening its Partnerships with other European film Industries Hollywood's role and approach to film making has shifted over the

years without International co-productions Hollywood wouldn't flourish today so um American Film Production is strongly dependent on co-producing internationally and even moving their facilities towards uh European and Eastern European countries to be able to produce on such a large scale so American Cinema is still very dominant but like as a kind of organizing Focus for a kind of global Cinema which connects American Productions with International companies Asian markets are now by far the biggest in the world and they are challenging the status quo today Hollywood might seem like a force of nature an inevitability the US

is the king of content and exercises enormous cultural influence not least through Cinema despite the movies being a purely economic product of course but it is fascinating to realize how many coincidences and world events set the stage for this level of dominance if Market as escalation hadn't happened during World War I the industry might have been more balanced for contrast Becker argues the music industry exploded in the ' 50s and is much less centralized what if Germany had been less weak economically in the late 20s what if chinah hadn't crumbled etc etc of course all

of this is pure speculation in the end we just wish we could have been there at the birth of a medium we love so much