Classical Hollywood cinema

In film criticism, classical Hollywood cinema is both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking that first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the later years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of United States cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood from 1927, with the advent of sound film, until the 1960s and the arrival of New Hollywood productions such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. During the intervening forty years, it was the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.

Similar or associated terms include classical Hollywood narrative, Old Hollywood, and classical continuity. The period is also referred to as the studio era, which may also include films of the late silent era but ended before the 1970s with the studios' loss of both their own movie theaters and the creative talent they had held under contract.