Hollywood's "Foreign War": The Effect of National Commercial Policy on the Emergence of the American Film Hegemony in France, 1920-1929 (original) (raw)

1999, "Film Europe" and "Film America": Cinema, Commerce, and Cultural Exchange 1920-1939. ED. by Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby. University of Exeter Press

Hollywood obtained a dominant position abroad after World War I. Hollywood obtained almost full control of the British market during the War, but in the 1920s, the American industry had important "foreign wars" with France, Germany, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries. This essay is based on a stody of the wealth of documents in the American government archives relating to the conflict with France.

The film business in the U.S. and Britain during the 1930s

Film was a most important product in the lives of the people during the 1930s. This paper sets out to analyse the underlying economic arrangements of the film industries of the U.S. and Britain during the decade in producing and diffusing this commodity-type to the population at large. In doing this, the paper finds a highly competitive industry that was built around showing films that audiences wanted to see, irrespective of the extent of vertical integration. It also examines the nature of the inter-relationship between the two industries and finds an asymmetry between the popularity of British films in the American market and that of American films in the British market. Our explanation for this is that the efforts of British firms on the American market were not sufficiently sustained to make a significant impact on American audiences

The Great War in American and British Cinema, 1918–1938

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media, 2020

Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media publishes original, high quality research into the cultures of communication from the middle ages to the present day. The series explores the variety of subjects and disciplinary approaches that characterize this vibrant field of enquiry. The series will help shape current interpretations not only of the media, in all its forms, but also of the powerful relationship between the media and politics, society, and the economy.

Hollywood Studios, Independent Producers and International Markets: Globalisation and the US Film Industry c.1950–1965

2014

This paper examines the internationalisation of Hollywood entertainment in the period c.1949-1965. Two observations are commonly made about the US motion picture industry in this period. The first is that the era witnessed the 'disintegration' of the studio system, with the major vertically integrated 'studios' forced to sell off their cinema chains and also becoming increasingly reliant on 'independent' producers to supply their product. The second is that the period saw US producers and distributors become increasingly reliant on foreign markets as a source of revenue. This paper analyses the 665 films released internationally in this period by Warner Bros. and MGM, for which reliable financial data is available from surviving studio ledgers. It examines the foreign revenues earned by these films, and compares this with the 'international orientation' of the pictures themselves (an international orientation index is constructed on the basis of each film's setting, characters, stars and other creative inputs). The paper finds that the growing importance of foreign markets for US distributors was reflected in the balance of their film portfolios, with an increasing proportion of films with a strong international orientation as the period progressed. The evidence also indicates that independent producers, rather than major studios themselves, were increasingly responsible for the production of this internationally oriented product. Finally, the paper examines the geographical locations where these internationally oriented films were set, and compares this with the international distribution of film revenues for the major studios. Certain national locations were clearly more commonly used as film settings than others, and such differences cannot be simply be explained by their relative value as film markets.

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BOOK REVIEW: “The Emergence of Film Culture. Knowledge, Production, Institution Building and the Fate of the Avant-garde in Europe, 1919-1945, Book Review, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol° 35, N° 3, pp. 530-533, DOI:10.1080/01439685.2015.1059616