Decades of Films?

[Scott]

How many films are made a year? How many films were made in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, etc. compared to how many films will be made here in 2001? When video sales and rentals started about 20 years ago did this cause a great increase in filmmaking? If so by how many?

I'm just wondering because it seems to me that I have always had very little interest in films made in the past 20 years, unless its on of the better films of the year. Its hard for me to get into a 80's and 90's B-Movie. I'm just trying to figure out why this is. Is it that producers were more selective about what they put on film, since it had a very limited window of money making opportunities?

[Andrew]

Using the IMDB's power search will let you find out how many films were made during certain periods.  It's not perfect and there are certain to be films missing, but it should give you a good idea of trends.

I ran the search and selected "exclude TV series."

1930-1939:  19,558 results
1950-1959:  20,286 results
1980-1989:  36,316 results
1990-1999:  58,731 results

Andrew

[Scott]

Thanks for the info Andrew, It seems that film is just being produced without bringing forth one or two scenes that really make a lasting impression. I think even the older B-movies were able to do this. Todays films have become a blur of ideas without really making an impression. Someone once said that its the empty space between the notes that makes a song interesting.

[BoyScoutKevin]

That is an interesting statistic Andrew found. My guess would have been the opposite. That more films were made in the earlier decades. I'll look around and see if I can find any statistics that prove it one way or the other. (EOM) On the other hand, Scott, I find--through my surfing of film websites on the internet--that it is films from the last 20 years that attract the most attention. Most people seem to have little interest in films made before 1980, though I think they are better then the films made in the past 20 years. (IMHO)

[Josh Leman]

I think it's pretty obvious that way more movies are being made now than there were in the past.  The very concept of "independent cinema" didn't even exist (in America at least) until the late '60s.  It was all completely controlled by the studios.  Today, anybody can make a movie (though it's still hard to raise money and find distributors, etc.).

Of course, none of this takes foreign film industries into account.  I think India produces like three times as many movies as the USA, and just the sheer population of Asia makes it a much more important film market than North America.  When people say Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson is the biggest movie star in the world, it's all a lie--the real biggest star in the world is probably Chow Yun-Fat.

But I digress.  The point is, the USA probably produces ten times as many movies today as it did fifty years ago.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Since 1949, John Willis has compiled "Screenworld," a book, that each year, lists the movies released in the U.S. for the previous year. A fairly inclusive list, as I remember. I only have access for those from 1951 and on, so I do not have figures for the '30's or the '40's, and my figures for the '50's are incomplete, but the figures I do have come from those "Screenworlds," and they do support what Andrew has said. The first figure is for American films only, and the second figure in () is for both American and foreign films. '50's 1879 (2252) -- '60's 1621 (2996) -- '70's 2456 (3535) -- '80's 2535 (4049) -- '90's 2693 (3896) On the other hand, they may be making more movies, but fewer people are going each week to see them. These weekly averages are from the International Motion Picture Almanac, another inclusive source of information. Since a high of 78.2M movie goers per week in 1946, there was a steady decline to 15.8M movie goers per week in 1971. Since then, the average number of movie goers per week has ranged from 16.6M to about 26M movie goers per week. With the average steadily increasing each year.Enjoy