American film became popular with the rise of the feature film. The early "nickelodeons," silent films that cost a nickle to see that became popular at the turn of the century (19th to 20th), did not spread internationally, but they did draw in international filmmakers to Hollywood. As the technology progressed, American film became popular internationally very quickly, however, and by the First World War, American film had come to dominate some foreign markets (especially in Britain, where 2/3 of featured films were American). This led to some backlash from foreign film makers, and at various times various nations have set quotas on American film. Nevertheless, after the First World War, American film continued to find new markets, and before Stalin's government put a stop to it, American films accounted for half of all films seen in the Soviet Union (during the Second World War, the Soviet Union again allowed for American films to be shown in the Soviet Union as part of the effort to maintain the alliance, but this renewed accord collapsed even before the end of the war).

So American films became very popular very fast, and have remained the most popular films in the world to this day. But why? My thesis adviser, who specializes in American film, would offer his American foreign policy students the following list of reasons:

1. American culture readily translated into entertaining films with mass appeal. While the Soviet Union actively pursued film export as a means to generate goodwill, their films were stuffy and overly-propagandistic. American films, on the other hand, featured fast cars, fun heroes, and opulent wealth, all of which drew the attention of the masses (it turns out).

2. More importantly, the domestic American market for feature films was HUGE. Americans had money to spend, there were lots of them, and they loved movies. An American studio, therefore, could invest far more money into a film than could studios from France, Britain, or the Soviet Union, and reasonably expect a return. Even then, studios often invested so much money in a film that it lost money in the domestic market, only to turn around and make a profits when the movie was exported. This is a business model simply unavailable to the rest of the world, and it made American films by far the most expensive in the world.

3. The MPAA (originally the MPPDA, the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America) and the Commerce Department actively pursued the export of American film. The importance of the Commerce Department should not be understated in this case, as the DOC provided American distributors with market analysis, and, more importantly, fought to overcome those foreign interests seeking to regulate the import of American film in order to support domestic efforts (as well as to keep American "decadence" & "low culture" out of their nations).