Schatz incorporates these four companies into a narrative that examines the studio system chronologically from its inception in the 1920s to the breakdown of that system in the post World War 11 period.
Universal, on the other hand, was a "major-minor," lacking in capital and resources, which forced the studio to emphasize lower grade and more systematic production. MGM and Warner Brothers were integrated major studios whose ownership of theater chains allowed them to dominate the market, while independents such as Selznick relied heavily upon the majors for performers, technicians, production facilities, and distribution. Selznick-whose Selznick International Pictures constituted a personal studio while introducing the concept of the independent producer and eventually undermining the studio system. Instead, Schatz argues that greater attention and credit should be awarded to producers and executives who drafted unique studio styles, and, accordingly, that "any individual's style was no more than an inflection of an established studio style" (6).Īsserting that a history of the entire studio system would be unwieldy, Schatz focuses his book upon four representative examples: Warner Brothers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Universal, and independent producer David O. Schatz, a professor of communications at the University of Texas, challenges the "auteur theory" of film authorship, which celebrates the film director as an artist whose personal style often negated the dehumanizing and profit-driven studio factory system. This attractive paperback edition of Thomas Schatz's study of the classical Hollywood studio era, originally published in 1989, assures that this essential piece of film scholarship remains readily available for academics as well as film fans seeking to better understand the contributions of Hollywood to cinema from the 1920s through the 1950s. University of Minnesota Press, 2010 $24.95 The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
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