The American is a 2010 American thriller film directed by Anton Corbijn and starring George Clooney, Thekla Reuten, Violante Placido, Irina Björklund, and Paolo Bonacelli. The Rowan Joffé screenplay is an adaptation of the 1990 novel A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth. The film opened on September 1, 2010.
Jack (George Clooney), a gunsmith and contract killer, and his lover, Ingrid (Irina Björklund), are relaxing in Sweden. Jack becomes alarmed by a trail of footprints in the snow and pulls Ingrid towards shelter. Sniper gunshots ring out. Ingrid sees Jack pull a gun from his pocket and shoot the approaching sniper. Knowing his identity is in jeopardy, and with little hesitation, Jack shoots and kills Ingrid. He flees to Rome and contacts his handler Pavel (Johan Leysen), who insists that Jack cannot stay in Rome. Pavel sends him to Castelvecchio (a small town in the mountains of Abruzzo). Jack becomes nervous, and, disposing of the cell phone Pavel gave him, goes to nearby Castel del Monte, Abruzzo, instead.
The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is Classical Hollywood Cinema, which developed from 1917 to 1960 and characterizes most films to this day. While the French Lumière Brothers are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, it is American cinema that soon became the most dominant force in an emerging industry. Since the 1920s, the American film industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country in the world.
In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The United States was in the forefront of sound film development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Picture City, Florida was also a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, the idea collapsed and Picture City returned to its original name of Hobe Sound. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar. Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time.
American Film is an movie magazine originally published by the American Film Institute (AFI) as a print publication between 1975 and 1992. The magazine emphasized analysis and deconstructionist criticism in a format similar to Film Comment magazine.
AFI re-launched the magazine as an ongoing monthly digital edition in April 2012.