Los Angeles: the 'City of Angels'. Whether this epithet evokes sunshine and beaches, glamorous movie stars or the possibility of fame, many around the world have a fantasy of this enchanting, impossible place stored in their minds. Its reality is as much the record of the place on film as the 'real' Los Angeles. This is because Los Angeles is first and foremost a city of cinema, both in the movies that are made there, and the filmed image of the place, either recorded on location or recreated in a studio set. In Hollywood Cinema and the Real Los Angeles, Mark Shiel explores Los Angeles from the invention of motion pictures in the 1890s to the decline of the studio system in the 1950s, describing the ever-changing cinematic image of the city, and the ways in which its representations reflected and manipulated its physical geography.