Classical Hollywood cinema

Before the visual style which would become known as "classical continuity", scenes were filmed in full shot and used carefully choreographed staging to portray plot and character relationships.

Films worldwide began to noticeably adopt visual and narrative elements which would be found in classical Hollywood cinema.

It was also the year when Yevgeni Bauer (the first true film artist, according to Georges Sadoul[7]) started his short, but prolific, career.

Lillian Gish, the star of film short The Mothering Heart, is particularly noted for her influence on on-screen performance techniques.

Griffith's 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation, also starring Gish, was ground-breaking for film as a means of storytelling – a masterpiece of literary narrative with numerous innovative visual techniques.

[10] Though 1913 was a global landmark for filmmaking, 1917 was primarily an American one; the era of "classical Hollywood cinema" is distinguished by a narrative and visual style which began to dominate the film medium in America by 1917.

Other strong-willed directors, like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra, battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions.

The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz; Gone with the Wind; The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Stagecoach; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Destry Rides Again; Young Mr. Lincoln; Wuthering Heights; Only Angels Have Wings; Ninotchka; Beau Geste; Babes in Arms; Gunga Din; The Women; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; and The Roaring Twenties.

[16] The visual-narrative style of classical Hollywood cinema, as elaborated by David Bordwell,[17] was heavily influenced by the ideas of the Renaissance and its resurgence of mankind as the focal point.

The 180-degree and 30-degree rules are elementary guidelines in filmmaking that preceded the official start of the classical era by over a decade, as seen in the pioneering 1902 French film A Trip to the Moon.

Time in classical Hollywood is continuous, linear, and uniform, since non-linearity calls attention to the illusory workings of the medium.

[19] The greatest rule of classical continuity regarding space is object permanence: the viewer must believe that the scene exists outside the shot of the cinematic frame to maintain the picture's realism.

The treatment of space in classical Hollywood strives to overcome or conceal the two-dimensionality of film ("invisible style") and is strongly centered upon the human body.

Other surviving figures who were nominated for the list include Ann Blyth (96), Claire Bloom (93), Rita Moreno (93) and Margaret O'Brien (88).