Page 13 of 33 IELTS.org
General Training Reading Sample Task – Matching
Features
[Note: This is an extract from a General Training Reading text on the subject
of the history of cinema. The text preceding this extract gave a general overview.]
Although French, German, American and British pioneers have all been credited
with the invention of cinema, the British and the Germans played a relatively
small role in its worldwide exploitation. It was above all the French, followed
closely by the Americans, who were the most passionate exporters of the new
invention, helping to start cinema in China, Japan, Latin America and Russia. In
terms of artistic development it was again the French and the Americans who
took the lead, though in the years before the First World War, Italy, Denmark
and Russia also played a part.
In the end it was the United States that was to become, and remain, the largest
single market for films. By protecting their own market and pursuing a vigorous
export policy, the Americans achieved a dominant position on the world market
by the start of the First World War. The centre of filmmaking had moved
westwards, to Hollywood, and it was films from these new Hollywood studios
that flooded onto the world’s film markets in the years after the First World War,
and have done so ever since. Faced with total Hollywood domination, few film
industries proved competitive. The Italian industry, which had pioneered the
feature film with spectacular films like “Quo Vadis?” (1913) and “Cabiria” (1914),
almost collapsed. In Scandinavia, the Swedish cinema had a brief period of
glory, notably with powerful epic films and comedies. Even the French cinema
found itself in a difficult position. In Europe, only Germany proved industrially
capable, while in the new Soviet Union and in Japan, the development of the
cinema took place in conditions of commercial isolation.
Hollywood took the lead artistically as well as industrially. Hollywood films
appealed because they had better constructed narratives, their special effects
were more impressive, and the star system added a new dimension to screen
acting. If Hollywood did not have enough of its own resources, it had a great deal
of money to buy up artists and technical innovations from Europe to ensure its
continued dominance over present or future competition.
From early cinema, it was only American slapstick comedy that successfully
developed in both short and feature format. However, during this ‘Silent Film’
era, animation, comedy, serials and dramatic features continued to thrive, along
with factual films or documentaries, which acquired an increasing distinctiveness
as the period progressed. It was also at this time that the avant-garde film first
achieved commercial success, this time thanks almost exclusively to the French
and the occasional German film.
Of the countries which developed and maintained distinctive national cinemas in
the silent period, the most important were France, Germany and the Soviet
Union. Of these, the French displayed the most continuity, in spite of the war
and post-war economic uncertainties. The German cinema, relatively
insignificant in the pre-war years, exploded on to the world scene after 1919. Yet
even they were both overshadowed by the Soviets after the 1917 Revolution.
They turned their back on the past, leaving the style of the pre-war Russian