The Iranian cinema has been one of the most neglected subjects in the study of Iranian art and the history of film. The purpose of this work, which covers the entire period of cinematographic development up to the 1979 Iranian Revlution, is to provide the reader with insight into the evolution and decline of the Iranian cinema as a cultural and social phenomenon. For much of the nineteenth century, cinema, as an integral part of culture, was in the same suffocating state as the rest of Iranian cultural life. Therefore, in order to understand it, this subject should be discussed from a socio-cultural and political point of view. The first chapter provides a brief historical background focusing on the cross-cultural syncretism that occurred in Iran thoroughout the centuries, including the country’s contact with modern Western Civilization. In the second chapter, attention is devoted to the birth and early progress of cinema, which necessarily sheds light on the penetration of Western Civilization into Iran during the last hundred years. The third chapter describes the first experimental amateurish silent films. Chapter four gives an introduction to a second period of film activity under Muhammad Reza Shah. The fifth chapter describes the development of movie houses in Iran after World War II. Chapter six opens with a description of the cultural policy of the “White Revolution” and the regimes attempts to revive the national culture. The emergence of the Iranian “new cinema” appears in this context. The analysis of the new cinema from a social cultural and political point of view attempts to deal with the question, What is characteristic of the Iranian “new cinema” films? I attempt to provide a summary of development in Iranian society in the 1970s in order to explain the failure of the “White Revolution” and it’s cultural policy. I hope to provide an answer to the question, Why, despite participation in film production and despite the expenditure of a great deal of oil revenue in the cultural field, could the regime not create a national cinema?