The Oxford History of World Cinema (23 page)

limit the proportion of foreign films that were exhibited in the German domestic market.

In effect, the new regulation stated that only as many films could be imported each year

as were produced within Germany. In 1927 German studios produced a total of 241

features, which amounted to 46.3 per cent of the total number of films exhibited in that

year. American imports amounted to only 36.8 per cent, with the remainder being drawn

from a variety of other foreign sources. The 'contingent' paved the way for many similar

kinds of protective legislation by the filmproducing nations of Europe: Austria, Hungary,

France, Britain, and Australia all introduced quota legislation of some kind in the late

1920s. The British Films Act of 1928, for example, specified a gradual increase in the

proportion of domestically produced film to be distributed in the British market,

beginning with 7.5 per cent in the first year.

There were many difficulties inherent in making such regulations work smoothly,

especially in countries where infrastructure for film-making was less advanced than it was

in Germany. In trying to formulate appropriate protectionist measures, governments were

forced to perform delicate balancing acts between the economic and cultural imperatives

of production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. Probably the most intransigent

problem was that exhibitors in most countries favoured American movies, for obvious

reasons: they arrived like clockwork and they made profits. In every country (including

the United States) investment in sites of exhibition amounted to more than total

investment in production. The culturally based protectionist arguments of producers

therefore had to contend with weighty resistance from exhibitor lobbies which sought to

retain unrestricted access to American material. Another problem was that quotas could

result in the production of rapid, substandard films (often funded by national subsidiaries

of Hollywood studios) designed simply to meet the regulations and allow for the

concomitant importation of the maximum number of American products. 'Quota quickies',

as they were known in Britain, simply had the effect of eroding the prestige of the local

product.

BRITAIN AND THE EMPIRE

Australia, Canada, and New Zealand were hopeful that British quota legislation could

lead to a 'film-buying' group amongst the film-producing members of the British Empire,

perhaps countering some of the advantages of America's exclusive home market. The

requirement that Empire films should be afforded certain minimum amounts of screen

time in Britain raised the possibility that countries throughout the Empire would benefit

first through the exhibition of their films in the British Isles and secondly through their

mutual distribution throughout the other countries of the Empire. In practice, however,

this arrangement favoured the products of the relatively highly capitalized British

industry, and did very little to boost production in other countries. Empire countries

remained overwhelmingly dependent upon imported films, most of which were American.

In 1927, 87 per cent of Australian and New Zealand film imports originated in

Hollywood, compared with 5 per cent from Britain and 8 per cent from other countries. In

Canada the proportion of American product was even higher, possibly reaching over 98

per cent. Hollywood's Canadian business was integrated into the domestic US distribution

network to the extent that American distributors typically classified Canadian revenue as

domestic income. In India at least 80 per cent of films shown in the late 1920s were

American, even though twenty-one studios manufactured local films, eight or nine of

them in regular production. (Although its narrow range of distribution restricted its

cinematic and social influence, Indian film production later burgeoned, with production

levels exceeding those of any other country, including the United States, from the 1970s

on.)

Australia had the remarkable distinction of being the world's leading importer of

Hollywood film footage in 1922, 1926, 1927, and 1928. However, this does not imply

that Australia was the American industry's most lucrative customer nation during those

years. The relative importance of markets as generators of revenue for Hollywood's

coffers depended upon a range of factors including population size, per capita income,

distribution costs, and rates of foreign exchange. In the final analysis, Britain was always

Hollywood's most important foreign market, generating approximately 30 per cent of

foreign income in the late 1920s. In 1927 it was followed in importance by Australasia

(15 per cent), France (8.5 per cent), Argentina and Uruguay (7.5 per cent), Brazil (7 per

cent), and Germany (5 per cent).

FILM EUROPE

The idea of countering America's dominance abroad through co-operative international

action gained some currency in Europe in the 1920s. The so-called 'Film Europe'

movement consisted of various European initiatives, carried out between 1924 and 1928,

aimed at joint production and reciprocal distribution of films in the European sphere. Film

production on a small scale was carried out all over Europe in the 1920s: for example, in

1924 feature films were made in Austria (30 films), Belgium (4), Denmark (9), Finland

(4), Greece (1), Hungary (9), the Netherlands (6), Norway (1), Poland (8), Romania (1),

Spain (10), Sweden (16), and Switzerland (3). However, the major participants in Film

Europe were the principal producers of western Europe: Germany (228), France (73), and

Great Britain (33). The general idea was to create a kind of cinematic Common Market by

breaking down sales barriers to European movies within Europe, allowing a larger base

for production than any nation could manage individually. Ideally, the movement would

give European producers dominance within their own region as a prelude to a renewed

push into the wider global market. In 1924 an arrangement for mutual distribution

between Ufa and the French company établissements Aubert raised hopes that co-

operative ventures would gather momentum, but other deals were slow to eventuate. In

1925 the solidarity of the movement was shaken when Ufa ran into financial difficulties

and was bailed out by American studios; part of the settlement of the loan required that a

specified number of films by Paramount and MGM be given exhibition in Germany,

while Ufa films were given reciprocal distribution in the United States. Production and

distribution within Europe did increase at the expense of Hollywood as a result of the

'contingent' and quota arrangements of the late 1920s, but the change was never dramatic.

As hompson ( 1985) shows, France benefited least: when American imports fell in any of

the participating countries the difference was made up mainly with German films, and a

few from Britain.

If silent films had remained the norm, perhaps Film Europe would have continued to gain

ground, but it could not survive the introduction of sound. The effect of talking pictures

was to splinter this incipient unity into its component language groups. Any sense of

cohesion that had arisen from the shared determination to resist the American industry

was undermined by the local cultural imperative of hearing the accents of one's own

language. In Italy, for example, a law was passed in 1929 prohibiting the projection of a

movie in any language other than Italian, and similar strictures were temporarily instituted

in Portugal and Spain. Disastrously for the producers in France and Germany, they found

themselves alienated from the highly lucrative British market, leaving that field wide

open for the Americans. British manufacturers themselves adopted sound film production

with enthusiasm, but were now more interested in the ready-made Englishspeaking

market of the British Empire than in the problematic European arena. They were also

quick to recognize new potential for trade in the American market, and were inclined to

enter into deals across the Atlantic rather than across the English Channel. Several

Hollywood companies, including Warner Bros., United Artists, Universal, and RKO,

organized tie-ups with producers in England or entered into production there themselves,

encouraged by the need to secure product to satisfy the British quota.

The USSR was not directly involved in Film Europe, although some Soviet films found

their way into European circulation through the agency of a German Communist

organization (the
Internationale Arbeitershilfe
). The relationship of the Soviet film

industry to Hollywood output was quite different from that of the western Europeans: for

a few years in the early and mid-1920s American product was welcomed for its revenue-

raising potential. Since the whole industry was nationalized, profits earned at the box-

office could be put straight back into Soviet film production. The stream of imports was

reduced to a trickle after 1927 when Soviet films first generated more revenue than

imported products, and in the 1930s imports virtually ceased altogether. For their part,

Soviet movies gained very limited exposure in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s

through the New York office of the distributor Amkino.

Japanese films did not generally receive any international exposure at all. Yet, amazingly,

in the years 192232 Japan was the world's leading producer of feature films. Interest in

film had been strong amongst the Japanese since the inception of the medium, and

domestic business was profitable. Japanese studios reputedly manufactured 875 features

in 1924 -- some 300 more than the USA in the same year -- marketing them all

exclusively within its own domestic sphere. The five major companies were vertically

integrated, and so wielded decisive control over their industry much as the major studios

did in the United States. Cinemas tended to show either Japanese or foreign products but

not both, and the majority of theatres catered to the less expensive local product.

Although Hollywood companies were well represented in Japan, the Americans probably

only enjoyed about 11 per cent of the market in the late 1920s, with European movies

comprising a considerably smaller share.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE WORLD MARKET

The Japanese motion picture, designed for an audience conspicuous in its cultural

homogeneity, may never have had a future as a product for export. On the other hand, the

American product seems to have been universally well received.

Will Hays liked to explain the movies' popularity in terms of their historical appeal to the

polyglot immigrant communities of the large American cities; he claimed that American

producers necessarily developed a style of filmic communication that was not dependent

upon literacy or other specific cultural qualifications. Perhaps popular audiences were

attracted by fast-paced action and the optimistic, democratic outlook that had always

characterized American films, as well as by their unusually high production values. The

structure of the American domestic market itself supported the high capitalization of

American movies, since controlled distribution practices discouraged overproduction and

led to relatively high levels of investment in each individual project. At the same time,

foreign receipts were an integral part of Hollywood's economic structure in the 1920s, and

the studios therefore consciously tailored aspects of their output to the tastes of foreign

consumers. The higher the budget of the movie, the more comprehensively the foreign

market needed to be taken into account. Smaller films did not have to be shown

everywhere to make their money back, and consequently had to make fewer allowances

for foreign sensibilities. The most obvious concession to foreign tastes in 'prestige'

productions lay in the selection and promotion of stars with international drawing power.

Foreign audiences often responded particularly warmly to their own compatriots when

they appeared in the full international context of the Hollywood industry. When

Hollywood producers 'poached' acting talent from other national industries it not only

weakened their competitors, it also recruited the affections and loyalties of foreign

populations. Examples of European actors who were to be contracted to Hollywood

studios include Charles Laughton, Maurice Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer,

Robert Donat, Greta Garbo, and many others. Garbo constitutes a particularly

conspicuous example of the influence of foreign tastes. Although she is remembered

today as the quintessential screen goddess of the late 1920s and 1930s, she was never

overwhelmingly popular in the United States. Her reputation depended upon her immense

following abroad, and her films consistently depended upon the foreign market to take

them into profit.

It was not just actors who were recruited from foreign industries, but also technical

workers of all kinds, notably directors and cameramen. It was a logical business move for

an industry that could afford it to buy up the best staff in the world. As a tactic, there was

a capitalist elegance about it: only the strongest national industries could offer the training