Cinema of the United States in the context of "Pre-Code Hollywood"

A montage (/mɒnˈtɑːʒ/ mon-TAHZH) is a film editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information. Montages enable filmmakers to communicate a large amount of information to an audience over a shorter span of time by juxtaposing different shots, compressing time through editing, or intertwining multiple storylines of a narrative.

The term has varied meanings depending on the filmmaking tradition. In French, the word montage applied to cinema simply denotes editing. In Soviet montage theory, as originally introduced outside the USSR by Sergei Eisenstein, it was used to create symbolism. Later, the term "montage sequence", used primarily by British and American studios, became the common technique to suggest the passage of time.

Los Angeles County, sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,757,129 residents estimated in 2024. Its population is greater than that of 40 individual U.S. states. Comprising 88 incorporated cities and 101 unincorporated areas within a total area of 4,083 square miles (10,570 km), it accommodates more than a quarter of Californians and is one of the most ethnically diverse U.S. counties. The county's seat, Los Angeles, is the second most populous city in the United States, with 3,878,704 residents estimated in 2024. The county is globally known as the home of the U.S. motion picture industry since its inception in the early 20th century.

The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post-production, film festivals, distribution, and actors. Though the expense involved in making film almost immediately led film production to concentrate under the auspices of standing production companies, advances in affordable filmmaking equipment, as well as an expansion of opportunities to acquire investment capital from outside the film industry itself, have allowed independent film production to evolve.

In 2019, the global box office was worth $42.2 billion. When including box office and home entertainment revenue, the global film industry was worth $136 billion in 2018. Hollywood is the world's oldest national film industry, and largest in terms of box-office gross revenue.

The media of Los Angeles are influential and include some of the most important production facilities in the world. As part of the "Creative Capital of the World", it is a major global center for media and entertainment. In addition to being the home of Hollywood, the center of the American motion picture industry, the Los Angeles area is the second largest media market in North America (after New York City). Many of the nation's media conglomerates either have their primary headquarters (like The Walt Disney Company) or their West Coast operations (like NBCUniversal) based in the region. Universal Music Group, one of the "Big Four" record labels, is also based in the Los Angeles area.

The major daily newspaper is the Los Angeles Times, while La Opinión is the city's major daily Spanish-language paper. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety are significant entertainment industry papers in Los Angeles. There are also a wide variety of smaller regional newspapers, alternative weeklies and magazines, including LA Weekly, Los Angeles magazine, the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and the Los Angeles Downtown News. In addition to the English- and Spanish-language papers, numerous local periodicals serve immigrant communities in their native languages, including Korean, Persian, Russian and Japanese.

California is a state located in the Western United States. It is the most populous state and the third largest by area after Alaska and Texas. According to the 2020 United States Census, California has 39,538,223 inhabitants and 155,779.22 square miles (403,466.3 km) of land.

California has been inhabited by numerous Native American peoples for thousands of years. The Spanish, the Russians, and other Europeans began exploring and colonizing the area in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the Spanish establishing its first California mission at what is now San Diego in 1769. After the Mexican Cession of 1848, the California Gold Rush brought worldwide attention to the area. The growth of the movie industry in Los Angeles, high tech in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, tourism, agriculture, and other areas in the ensuing decades fueled the creation of a $3 trillion economy as of 2018, which would rank fifth in the world if the state were a sovereign nation.

Cinecittà Studios (pronounced [ˌtʃinetʃitˈta]; Italian for Cinema City) is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios were constructed during the Fascist era as part of a plan to revive the Italian film industry and to compete with Hollywood.

Filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Mel Gibson and Luca Guadagnino have worked at Cinecittà. More than 3,000 movies have been filmed there, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it. In the 1950s, the number of international productions being made there led to Rome being dubbed "Hollywood on the Tiber."

Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, and singer-songwriter. Primarily a comedic leading actor in films, his accolades include an Independent Spirit Award, alongside nominations for three Grammy Awards, seven Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2023, Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Sandler was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1995. He returned to Saturday Night Live as a host in 2019 earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Sandler gained further stardom starring in a string of successful Hollywood studio comedy films that have cumulatively grossed over $2 billion worldwide. These films include Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Waterboy (1998), The Wedding Singer (1998), Big Daddy (1999), Mr. Deeds (2002), Anger Management (2003), 50 First Dates (2004), The Longest Yard (2005), Click (2006), Grown Ups (2010), Just Go with It (2011), Jack and Jill (2011), Grown Ups 2 (2013) and Blended (2014).

Cecil Blount DeMille (/ˈsɛsəl dəˈmɪl/; August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959), often known in popular culture as Mr. DeMille, was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history, with many films dominating the box office three or four at a time. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants.

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts and raised in New York City, DeMille began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later began to write and direct stage plays, a few with his older brother William de Mille, and some with Jesse L. Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story was commercially successful, and the film marked Hollywood as the new home of the U.S. film industry. Based on continued film successes, DeMille founded Famous Players Lasky which was later reverse merged into Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and commercial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for 25 years.

The New Hollywood, Hollywood Renaissance, or American New Wave, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of filmmakers came to prominence. They influenced the types of film produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached filmmaking. In New Hollywood films, the film director, rather than the studio, took on a key authorial role.

The definition of "New Hollywood" varies, depending on the author, with some defining it as a movement and others as a period. The span of the period is also a subject of debate, as well as its integrity, as some authors, such as Thomas Schatz, argue that the New Hollywood consists of several different movements. The films made in this movement are stylistically characterized in that their narrative often deviated from classical norms. After the demise of the studio system and the rise of television, the commercial success of films was diminished.