5. By 1914, American films, which had trailed after French and British films, establish their dominance of the world's screens. What factors contributed to the American film dominance?

The Hollywood advantage is concentrated in one very particular kind of moviemaking: films that are entertaining, highly visible, and have broad global appeal. The typical European film has about 1% of the audience of the typical Hollywood film, and this differential has been growing. American movies have become increasingly popular in international markets, while European movies have become less so.  The turning point in this dynamic appears to have come in the 1970s. Before the 1970s, most national European cinemas still experienced a significant amount of export success, whatever problems the industry as a whole had. Since that time, European moviemakers have seen their export markets collapse.

The popularization of television, and the timing of this popularization, damaged European cinema. As television became widespread throughout Europe, movie audiences dwindled. In Germany, 800 million movie tickets were bought in 1956 but only 180 million were bought in 1962. At the same time, the number of television sets rose from 700,000 to 7.2 million. In the U.K., cinematic attendance fell from 292 million in 1967 to 73 million in 1986. In France, movie attendance dropped from 450 million in 1956 to 122 million in 1988. In Japan, the number of movie tickets sold in 1985 was only a sixth of what it had been 25 years earlier.

The geographical and weather condition of America, precisely Hollywood, where most filmmaker hometown is, has mild climate and reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film movies outdoors year-round, and by the varied scenery that was available.  In today’s technology weather plays less important role in contributing towards American film dominance.  However, back in the 1920s, when Griffith's controversial 1915 epic Birth of a Nation that pioneered the worldwide filming vocabulary that still dominates celluloid to this day, it has caused other filmmakers to produce more and more outdoor films.  It has become a phenomenon that sparks film industry to produce film with outdoor elements combined.  For French and British filmmakers, they were bound to weather and climate condition of four seasons that stop them from able to produce outdoor film as many as the American filmmakers.

One factor is to look at the market size.  Comparing French and British films where their homeland sizing is smaller than America.  American film domination gets support from its local large market size.  Since the 1920s, the American film industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country.  In plain word, America geographical and demographical size contributes American film dominance.  The Demographics element has further worsened the European problem. In most European countries like French and British, individuals older than 35 no longer go to movies in significant numbers, preferring instead to watch television. Moviegoing is the province of the young. Most European countries suffer twice here. First, they have older populations than does the United States. Second, the traditional "art house" styles of European film are better suited to old audiences than to young ones. This makes them especially hard to export. The advent of the cinematic multiplex, which tends to attract the young to movies more than the old, has worsened these problems.

When The Jazz Singer, the first film with synchronized voices, was successfully released as a Vitaphone talkie in 1927, Hollywood film companies would respond to Warner Bros. and begins to use Vitaphone sound.  The birth of sounds helps to further dominate the industry.  Although American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The synchronization technology was still too primitive for dubbing. One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films.  As example in 1930, the American companies opened a studio in Joinville-le-Pont, France, where the same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different time-sharing crews.  This is one example how American film managed to penetrate foreign market and maintain its dominance across the globe.

The birth of distributor of film in America also plays an important role in assisting American film dominance.  In this case, Miramax Films, founded in 1979, was an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films.  It serves more as a gatekeeper to the foreign films rather than distributing the foreign films inside American soil.  The market for foreign films has contracted in the US over the past thirty years, due to the rise of American independent film, the decline in independent theatres, and the restored vertical integration of the US film industry.  Due to the birth of distributor of film in America, more and more American films being showed largely in the home ground as well as international market.  The distributor plays important roles in controlling Americans exposure of films.  From YaleGlobal Online news, it is said that only 1% of international films being showed inside American soil and has become more structural rather than cultural.  This makes American to only be able to view their locally made movie and hardly to visual other international films that were probably as good as what being produced by the American filmmakers.