Film Trade Diplomacy between France and the United States: American and European Policies toward the Motion Picture Industry 1945-1971 (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Hollywood Films and Foreign Markets in the Studio Era: A Fresh Look at the Evidence
2014
The international appeal of Hollywood films through the twentieth century has been a subject of interest to economic and film historians alike. This paper employs some of the methods of the economic historian to evaluate key arguments within the film history literature explaining the global success of American films. Through careful analysis of both existing and newly constructed datasets, the paper examines the extent to which Hollywood's foreign earnings were affected by: film production costs; the extent of global distribution networks, and also the international orientation of the films themselves. The paper finds that these factors influenced foreign earnings in quite distinct ways, and that their relative importance changed over time.
The emergence of indigenous film industries across the world has been seen by many as a threat to the influence of Hollywood on the movie scene. This paper tries to look at the ideological influence of Hollywood on movies the world over. The paper considered the Chinese, Indian and the Nigerian film industries. The three industries were chosen because of their popularity in their continents and some parts of the world. The Theory of Cultural Imperialism is the supporting theory for this paper.
From Outsiders to Insiders? Strategies and Practices of American Film Distributors in Postwar Italy
Enterprise & Society, 2016
This article examines the impact of structural changes in the postwar film industry on the activities and effectiveness of the foreign distribution subsidiaries of American firms. As these subsidiaries saw their regular supply of films from their in-house Hollywood studios decline, they sought out alternative sources of product content, often from local markets. Unable to rely on the traditional “ownership” advantages bestowed on them by their parent firms, these subsidiaries increasingly needed to integrate into local networks and forge closer relationships with local producers and exhibitors. Our focus is on Italy, one of the most important film markets for US companies in the 1960s. We collect data on the box office revenues and screen time allocated to every film released into the first-run cinema market and compare the effectiveness of American versus Italian distributors in maximizing the exposure of their most popular films. We explore the attempts by US firms to form partner...
Hollywood Going East: State Socialist Studios' Opportunistic Business with American Producers
Lovejoy, A., & Pajala, M. (eds.), Remapping Cold War Media : Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations. Indiana University Press, 2022
Throughout the 1960s, political and economic liberalization in Czechoslovakia and other Central and Eastern European countries had stimulated an increase in film trade with the West. Around 1968, most of the major Hollywood studios were involved in one way or another in planning, producing, or at least co-financing films (mostly historical dramas) in collaboration with the state-run industries across the region. This chapter uses a case study of The Bridge at Remagen (John Guillermin, 1969) and the Barrandov Studios to propose a revisionist, industry-studies account of the early history of the US “runaway production” (Hollywood films shot entirely or partially overseas, primarily for financial reasons) behind the Iron Curtain and of Eastern Europe’s pragmatic dealings with Hollywood. The Bridge at Remagen’s location shooting collided with the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, and its complicated production history shows how Cold War reality seemed to work against the emerging business ties between the state-socialist studios and Hollywood. Indeed, the surreal encounter between the old US military equipment used by The Bridge at Remagen’s crew and Soviet soldiers outside Prague gave rise to conspiracy theories about the film’s supposed role in the KGB’s case for the invasion and speculations about the catastrophic consequences for the international reputation of Czechoslovak State Film (Československý státní film, the state-run film corporation). Yet the aim of this chapter is different: to show that the presence of American filmmakers in Prague in 1968 was not surprising. Nor would it be the last—instead, it was a part of a longer industry history. With the arrival of West European and Hollywood runaways to Eastern Bloc countries in the 1950s and especially 1960s, two distinct production systems and production cultures collided: a centralized, state-controlled, command-economy model—what I elsewhere call the “state-socialist mode of production”—versus US/Western European flexible, project-based organization; the egalitarian, self-censoring culture of state-socialist studios’ permanent employees versus the highly hierarchical work world and competitive informal networks of freelance above-the-line talent and below-the-line labor. The success of the Western runaway strategy as well as of the Eastern endeavor to reach new sources of hard currency depended not so much on finding themes of joint interest (as in co-productions), but rather on the ability of both sides to understand and mediate between these two production systems and cultures. Research on Eastern European cinemas’ international relations has so far tended to focus on cinema’s role in the cultural Cold War, its links to cultural-diplomatic objectives, and the ideological perils of co-productions between Eastern and Western countries, disregarding a longer tradition of “opportunistic” production services that eventually became the economically dominant industry mode across the region after 1989. This revisionist case study thus could be also perceived as a pre-history of East-Central European studios’ current business model, which is based predominantly on servicing foreign producers, a type of economically driven collaboration that falls under what Mette Hjort called “opportunistic transnationalism”.
Hollywood in the world market – evidence from Australia in the mid-1930s
Business History, 2014
By the mid-1930s the major Hollywood studios had developed extensive networks of distribution subsidiaries across five continents. This paper focuses on the operation of American film distributors in Australia-one of Hollywood's largest foreign markets. Drawing on two unique primary datasets, the paper compares and investigates film distribution in Sydney's first-run and suburban-run markets. It finds that the subsidiaries of US film companies faced a greater liability of foreignness in the city centre market than in the suburban one. Our data support the argument that film audiences in local or suburban cinema markets were more receptive to Hollywood entertainment than those in metropolitan centres.
Hollywood, The American Image And The Global Film Industry
CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2014
The emergence of indigenous film industries across the world has been seen by many as a threat to the influence of Hollywood on the movie scene. This paper tries to look at the ideological influence of Hollywood on movies the world over. the paper considered the Chinese, Indian and Nigerian film industries. the three industries were chosen because of their influence on their continents and some parts of the world. The Theory of cultural Imperialism is chosen as the supporting theory for the paper.