Ross Melnick, professor of film and media studies at the University of California, has written a doorstop of a book. Totaling over five hundred pages, with some seventy pages of endnotes, there is much to admire in terms of the sheer level of academic industry and detective-like dedication to rooting out sources from all over the world. The acknowledgments alone are notable for their length and generosity of spirit. One of the most notable qualities of this book is it simultaneous American-centered focus in combination with a truly global feel and appreciation for audiences and contexts. The rationale for the book helps explain this threading of experience and perspective; as Melnick observes, if one is interested in how film potentially influences domestic and international audiences, then one should pay attention not only to the star system and the movie industry but also to how the film is exhibited. Movie theaters matter—a statement that might come as a surprise to the Netflix generation but not to anyone of my age and older who saw the cinema as a welcome opportunity to consume the latest Hollywood offerings in the company of their school friends. And perhaps, once again, all the more poignant when I could not visit my local theater due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Melnick's book is a masterful achievement. Early on, it sets out the mission in question. Working from the period 1923 to 2013 (an epilogue takes us up to 2019), the focus is unrelentingly on Hollywood's ownership and operation of scores of cinemas located in countries scattered around the world. Generously illustrated throughout, the book should appeal to a diverse range of scholars including business historians, propaganda and media experts, and film studies scholars for several reasons. First, it establishes a clear rationale for taking seriously the ownership and operating practices surrounding movie theaters. Hollywood studios such as MGM and Paramount were major investors and thus helped to engineer the transmission of their products beyond continental North America. Second, the situated geographies of the movie theaters offer insights into local reception and engagement with audiences and host governments. Movie theaters were more than just places where films were screened and stored. Third, the idea of the movie theater as the “show window” for the United States clearly resonates with those scholars who have devoted their energies to the cultural Cold War and the importance of U.S. popular culture in perpetuating a glamorous and enticing view of America. Melnick speaks appropriately of “embassies.” Movie theaters contributed to the more fixed infrastructures of soft power—and this would complement the work of other scholars who have devoted their energies to pursuing studies of, say, transnational U.S. hotel chains and public information agencies. One should not underestimate the importance of comfortable seats and air conditioning. It was not, therefore, just about the enduring screen appeal of Hollywood stars and comforting depictions of American consumer culture and family life (depending on film choices and genres).

The bulk of the book is then given over to regional overviews—of Europe, Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Oceania, and Asia. Within each region, Melnick considers the political, economic, legal, and cultural contexts and ramifications of the studios’ network of movie theaters. Working with appropriate and accessible sources, what is reviewed is a detailed yet fascinating patchwork of experience, interest, and practice. No one place or region was the same. For this reviewer, a geographer who writes on film and geopolitics, the strongest feature of the book was this relentless attention to audience and context. Movies can and do land very differently depending on local and national circumstances. American cultural media and movie theaters could also become sites of opposition, protest, and violence. The experiences of Egyptian movie theaters were telling in that regard. Even earlier, in the 1920s, trouble was also afoot in the English city of Birmingham. Local cinemas were up in arms against plans by Paramount to lease two of their number. Cinematic apartheid was another issue that had to be confronted in southern Africa, revealing in turn a rather unsavory complicity with the politics of segregation.

Accusations of U.S. cultural domination and cultural imperialism were never far removed from discussions of American movies, television programs, and news broadcasting. American movie theaters, as this book reminds us repeatedly, directly affected local economies, polities, and societies. Latin America was emblematic of all of that (in the sense that Hollywood's movie theaters acted as powerful “show windows” for US cultural and geopolitical values and practices). The success or failure of a Hollywood film was and is always the result of a mélange of factors and circumstances. Intriguingly, Melnick contends that the U.S.-owned movie theater also played a part in forcing local establishments to try harder as they had to adapt to foreign competition.

This is a book to be dipped into and savored. There is much to enjoy and digest. The style is academically dense and yet engaging throughout. Its greatest strength is a relentless attentiveness to the transnational and the situatedness of local and regional movie theaters. The reader learns that studio companies such as Fox, MGM, and Paramount did not take a cookie-cutter approach to their movie theaters. Sometimes the American-ness of their operations was downplayed by working closely with domestic theater operators. In other places, such as India, China, and Japan, local audiences and markets were a lot harder to penetrate. Nowadays, companies such as Disney and Netflix are far more interested in their own subscription models and screening channels. In a highly poignant epilogue, Melnick alerts the reader to the advances made by the Chinese Wanda Group. As one cinematic empire shrinks owing to the pandemic and changing viewing habits, another expands.

What is clear as well is that the agenda-setting qualities of this book stimulate thoughts in this reader—there are other ways in which we can trace global Hollywood. The organization and distribution of location filming would make for a fascinating companion piece. Hollywood Embassies is a testimony to slow and patient scholarship.