ABSTRACT
The conception of a film, according to anyone’s commonsense definition, corresponds to that which was developed in Hollywood by the middle of the First World War. It organises both film production and film exhibition into a unit: both at the level of economic organisation, and at the level of the experience of film viewing and the construction of film texts. From the particular and powerful basis of the American market, this conception of film and of cinema was spread to dominate the whole of the Western world, and to a greater or lesser extent other markets with strong traditions of cinematic representation of their own, like India and Japan.
