separate Movie Makers article, Herman G. Weinberg called its scenery "a fantastically beautiful vision of a dream metropolis, done in the expressionistic manner, but done with a fine eye for the camera and the context of the piece". C. Adolph Glassgold, contributing editor of the journal The Arts, called A Hollywood Extra "a truly tremendous picture" and said that Florey could become "the eventual leader of cinematic art": "It has movement, tempo, form, intensity of feeling, highly dramatic moments; in short, it is a real motion picture." In a Film Mercury review, Anabel Lane predicted that Florey would "one day hold a position of one of the bigger film directors": "If this production had been made in Europe and heralded as a hit, it would ... have been called a masterpiece." A Variety reviewer wondered if A Hollywood Extra was "an unannounced foreign-made short", given its stylistic similarity to European art films. Film director Henry King called it "way ahead of its time" and "a stroke of genius": "It was the most original thought I ever saw". A Hollywood Extra has been praised by modern film historians and critics, who often include it on lists of prominent experimental films. Brian Taves called it a "landmark" of avant-garde film: "A Hollywood Extra was something entirely new, in both style and substance; more than any other American film, it initiated the avant-garde in this country." Film historian William Moritz called it "a genuine little masterpiece" and "perhaps the most famous American experimental film of the 1920s". Colorado State University film professor Hye Seung Chung called the film an "early American avant-garde masterpiece", and described Florey as "one of the most undeservingly neglected B film auteurs". David E. James described it as the "prototypical 20th-century avant-garde film", and A Hollywood Extra commercial success indicates that experimental films were acceptable to contemporary popular viewers "rather than only an elite or mandarin audience". Director and author Lewis Jacobs wrote, "Its style, broad and impressionistic, disclosed a remarkable sensitivity and resourcefulness in the use of props, painting, camera, and editing." The full, original film has not survived. In 1997, however, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A Hollywood Extra has been restored and released on two DVD collections: Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894–1941 (by Image