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Film is a medium that might have been especially made for America, a vast country which, by the beginning of the twentieth century, had a large immigrant population, many of whom could hardly speak English. These people' would have had little use for the theatre, even if they lived within easy distance of one. or for most of the books they could buy because they did not have enough English. But the movies the silent movies these they could all understand, so what America had more than any European country was a huge captive audience, a large proportion of them pretty well uneducated. And what these people wanted were simple stories in which, irrespective of the fact they couldn't understand the captions, the action told all.
In feeding the growing demand for screen entertainment, America was greatly helped by the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918 the making of films was not exactly high on the list of any European country's priorities. Films continued to be made but not to the same extent as before, and to fill the gap in foreign imports, America had to increase its own production. By the end of the decade, with Hollywood now firmly established as the center of the industry, America was well on its way to monopolizing the world market.
But if by the beginning of the 1920s America was the world leader in film production, it was not then nor has it been since--in the lead when it comes to developing film as an art form. Hollywood film is not interested in arts it is interested in money and the two rarely go together. To Hollywood film is, and really always has been, an industry. There is nothing about this attitude that should make us look down on it. The maker of decent, serviceable and mass-produced furniture is not to be looked down on because he isn't Chippendale. You might wish he were, but. that is another matter. So Hollywood quickly recognized film as an entertainment medium with a unique ability to put people onto seats and money in the pockets of producers, distributors and cinema managers and, mostly, left it to others to develop its potential as an art form.
Generally speaking, the efforts to extend the boundaries of film--to show that it could do more than car chases, romance and clowning--were being made elsewhere. In the 1920s in Germany, for example, expressionism was an artistic movement which used film as a medium. Expressionism is described in the Oxford Companion to Film as "a movement whose main aim was to show in images man's inner world and in particular the emotions of fear, hatred, love and anxiety". These days, most serious and sometimes not so serious---films attempt to do something like that as a matter of course.
57. The large immigrant population in America prefer film to other entertainment media Because ______.
A) the films, especially silent films, were usually easy to understand
B) they could not afford to buy books or magazines
C) they did not have theatres close enough to their homes
D) the film captions were simple enough for them to understand
58. What made the American film industry develop during the First World War?
A) The drastic drop in imports. B) The poor quality of European films.
C) The growing demand for war films. D) The rapid growth of population.
59. What can we learn about the American film industry around 1920?
A) Art films produced in American were better than those made elsewhere.
B) The Americans played a leading role in developing film as an art form.
C) Americans looked down upon their own films.
D) More films were made in America than anywhere else.
60. What does "it" in the last sentence of Paragraph 3 refer to?
A) To develop the potential of a movie as the an art form.
B) An entertainment medium in Hollywood.
C) Movie industry of America.
D) Money for the producer, distributor and cinema managers.
61. What do we learn about expressionism?
A) Its objective was to depict romance and car chases.
B) Its aim was to display man's various types of emotions.
C) It was developed in America in the 1920s.
D) Its motivation was to show man's varied facial expressions.
