Entertainment Industrialised
The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940

This study was the first to compare the film industry in Britain, France and the United States between 1890 and 1940.

Gerben Bakker (Author)

9780521898546, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 October 2008

472 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 3 cm, 0.86 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Open Entertainment Industrialised on any page, and the sense of real discovery is instant. This is history with new eyes … It is a book that demands to be read.' The Bioscope

Entertainment Industrialised was the first study to compare the emergence and economic development of the film industry in Britain, France and the United States between 1890 and 1940. Gerben Bakker investigates the commercialisation and industrialisation of live entertainment in the nineteenth century and analyses the subsequent arrival of motion pictures, revealing that their emergence triggered a process of incessant creative destruction, development and productivity growth that continues in the entertainment industry today. He argues that cinema industrialised live entertainment by automating it, standardising it and making it tradeable, a process that was largely demand led, and that a quality race between firms changed the structure of the international entertainment market. While a hundred years ago, European enterprises were supplying half of all films shown in the US, the quality race resulted in today's industry, in which a handful of American companies dominate the global entertainment business.

1. Introduction
Part I. The Rise of Entertainment: 2. The emergence of national entertainment markets
3. The increase in demand for entertainment
4. The structure of household entertainment expenditure
Part II. The Rise of the International Film Industry: 5. The emergence of cinema
6. The quality race
7. The failure to catch up
8. How films became branded products
Part III. Entertainment Industrialised: 9. International market integration: firms versus trade
10. Industrialising the discovery process
11. At the origins of increased productivity growth in services
12. Epilogue: after television.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Film theory & criticism [APFA]