“The American cinema is a classical art,” wrote André Bazin, “but why not then admire in it what is most admirable, i.e., not only the talent of this or that filmmaker, but the genius of the system.” Bazin's observation originally appeared in his 1957 essay “On the politique des auteurs” in Cahiers du cinéma when the journal's influential cadre of critics was establishing the critical infrastructure for an emergent film theory with – paradoxically – directorial authorship as its central tenet. Auteur theory later took hold in America through its main proponent, Andrew Sarris, who consolidated the notion that certain auteurs had successfully transcended the crass commercialism of Hollywood's industrial machinery. This view held sway after the demise of the studio era and the emergence of New Hollywood. Martin Scorsese, for example, proselytized for recognition of the director as the issuing source of artistic creativity, subversively antagonistic to “the system.” As he put it in A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies (1997), he especially values those directors “who circumvented the system to get their vision on the screen.”

But as Thomas Schatz rightly says in this welcome new edition of The Genius of the System, the influence of auteur criticism did lasting damage through its misrepresentation of the actual relations of power in Hollywood, “effectively stalling film history and criticism in a prolonged stage of adolescent romanticism” (5). Schatz's study, in contradistinction, examines classical Hollywood as a functioning system, as “a melding of institutional forces” (6). Schatz focusses on four companies – Warner Brothers, MGM and Universal, together with independent producer David O. Selznick (“a virtual studio unto himself”) – to examine how they “worked” through their respective production operations, marketing and sales strategies, corporate structures and management systems. First published in 1988, Schatz's seminal book made unprecedented use of archival sources and industry documents: “interoffice memos, corporate correspondence, … budgets, schedules, story conference notes, daily production reports, censorship files, and other materials generated for each production” (9). These “interweaving” histories provide not only richly detailed accounts of each studio but also an acutely observed overview of the studio system at large.

Here, Schatz also draws on F. Scott Fitzgerald's description of Hollywood in his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon. “You can take Hollywood for granted like I did,” wrote Fitzgerald, “or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don't understand. It can be understood too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads” (8). In taking on “the whole equation” Schatz has produced a landmark study of the studio era which significantly alters our perceptions of how Hollywood worked. For example, he sees studio executives such as Selznick, Darryl Zanuck and Irving Thalberg (the model for Fitzgerald's protagonist Monroe Stahr) as “misunderstood and undervalued” figures (8), especially when studio bosses have been habitually characterized as profit-driven philistines thwarting the artistic aspirations of creative directors.

The studio system which Schatz delineates is an altogether more complex configuration: this is where the particular style of a writer, director or star, or a cinematographer, art director or costume designer, “fused” with a studio's production operations and management structure, its resources and talent pool, its narrative traditions and marketing strategy – all these elements coalescing to produce a uniquely distinctive studio style. As Schatz convincingly demonstrates, it was within this institutional nexus that the real genius of Hollywood can be discovered.