The Oxford History of World Cinema (22 page)

Jobs, Gertrude ( 1966), Motion Picture Empire.

Koszarski, Richard ( 1990), An Evening's Entertainment.

The World-Wide Spread of Cinema

RUTH VASEY

The world-wide spread of cinema has been dominated by the distribution and exhibition

of Hollywood movies, despite the fact that film production has taken place around the

world since the turn of the century. The first means of film production and projection

were developed virtually simultaneously in France, Germany, and the United States in

about 1895, with the earliest films typically comprising single shots of single scenes or

incidents. Many of these early movies delighted audiences with their authentic rendering

of snippets of 'reality', and French innovators Auguste and Louis Lumière seized upon the

commercial possibilities inherent in the documentary capacities of the new medium. They

trained a team of cameramen/projectionists to demonstrate their Cinématographe

internationally, recording new footage as they went. By the end of July 1896 they had

carried the invention to London, Vienna, Madrid, Belgrade, New York, St Petersburg, and

Bucharest, creating widespread interest with their cinematic revelations of both the exotic

and the familiar. By the end of the year they had been around the world, introducing the

phenomenon of cinema to Egypt, India, Japan, and Australia. In the mean time Thomas

Edison's projector, the Vitascope, was also popularizing the medium in the United States

and Europe.

At the turn of the century motion picture production was essentially a cottage industry,

accessible to any enthusiastic entrepreneur with a modicum of capital and know-how. The

world's first feature film of over an hour's duration was made not in France or America

but in Australia, where The Story of the Kelly Gang was produced in 1906, the theatrical

company J. & N. Tait made the film without the benefit of any industrial infrastructure

whatsoever. By 1912 Australia had produced thirty features, and feature-length

productions had also been made in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary

(with fourteen features in 1912 alone), Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, the

United States, and Yugoslavia.

Despite the energy and commitment represented by this early flurry of film-making,

singular achievements in the area of production were to prove less important than

innovations in business organization in determining the shape of international film

commerce. Again France was the first to seize the initiative in terms of foreign

distribution. By 1908 the production company Pathé-Fèrres had established a network of

offices to promote its products-mainly short dramas and comic scenarios -- in areas

including western and eastern Europe, Russia, India, Singapore, and the United States

itself. In fact, in 1908 Pathé was the largest single supplier of films for the American

market. Films by other French companies, as well as British, Italian, and Danish

productions, were also circulating internationally at this time. By contrast, relatively scant

foreign business was conducted by American production houses. Although the American

companies Vitagraph and Edison were represented in Europe, their agents were more

interested in buying European films for circulation in America than in promoting their

own products abroad.

HOLLYWOOD'S RISE TO DOMINANCE

If there was little early sign of America's future dominance in the foreign field, the

streamlining of the American industry's business organization in its home market was

laying the foundations of its economic strength in the first fifteen years of the century.

The motion picture market within the United States was, and has remained, by far the

most lucrative in the world. In the years prior to the First World War American producers

concentrated on consolidating that market under their own control. As Kristin Thompson (

1985) points out, the relatively late entry of the Americans into serious international film

commerce can be put down to the more ready profits waiting to be exploited in the

domestic arena; the French market, by contrast, was relatively small, so it did not take

French producers long to look abroad for new audiences for their products. The sheer size

of the American exhibition field encouraged the application of standardized business

practices, including increasingly systematic and efficient methods of production and

distribution. Although a fully vertically integrated system of industrial organization did

not emerge until the 1920s, the various branches of the industry were already tending

towards combination in the 1910s. With the majority of economic power concentrated in

the hands of relatively few players, the larger companies could afford to act as an

exclusive oligopoly, collectively protecting the interests of existing corporations at the

expense of newcomers -- either domestic or international -- with the result that after 1908

it became increasingly difficult for foreign companies to gain access to the American

exhibition field. The implications of this situation for the subsequent history of world

cinema were extremely far-reaching. It meant that the American producers eventually had

consistent and virtually exclusive access to their own exceptionally lucrative market,

enabling them to recoup most of the costs of expensive productions, or to go into profit,

even before entering overseas distribution. As a result, the American industry could

produce highly capitalized productions that outperformed their international rivals in

terms of both production values and reliability of supply. Moreover, with costs largely

being recovered in the domestic sphere, even the most lavish American productions could

be offered to foreign exhibitors at affordable prices. In retrospect, it is apparent that the

effective control of the domestic market by American producers was the factor that

resulted in much of the world's motion picture commerce becoming a one-way affair.

Nevertheless, in the years prior to the First World War the inevitability of this outcome

was by no means clear, either to American producers or to the Europeans, who were

enjoying considerable success in the international arena. Frenchman Max Linder, working

for Pathé, was probably the world's most popular comedian, not yet facing competition

from Hollywood clowns such as Chaplin or Keaton. The Danish company Nordisk was

distributing 370 films a year by 1913, making it second only to Pathé in terms of

international sales; its star, Asta Nielsen, enjoyed widespread international success. Italy

was producing the most notable spectaculars on the world scene, making grand historical

epics such as Quo vadis? ( Enrico Guazzoni , 1913). Even when the war disrupted film

industries across western Europe, and closed all but domestic markets to French

production, the Americans were slow to expand their foreign sales: rather than dealing

directly with the majority of their foreign customers, they allowed most of their overseas

business to be conducted by foreign sales agents who re-exported American movies from

London to destinations around the world. It was not until 1916, when the British imposed

tariffs on foreign film trade, that the centre of movie distribution shifted from London to

New York. The consequent increase in American control over foreign sales and rentals

encouraged producers and distributors to take a more active and involved stance in

foreign trade.

Between 1916 and 1918 the extent of the American industry's representation overseas

increased markedly. Some companies preferred to sign agents overseas to act on their

behalf, while others formed subsidiary branches to handle foreign distribution. Universal,

which had established distribution facilities in Europe before the war, initiated new

branches in the Far East, while Fox established a combination of agencies and branches in

Europe, South America, and Australia. Famous Players-Lasky and Goldwyn both worked

through agencies in South Africa, South America, Australia, Scandinavia, Central

America, and Europe. While these patterns of expansion involved a measure of

competition, particularly in Europe, it is notable that between them these four companies

managed to encircle virtually the entire globe with regional networks. In 1920 American

exports of exposed film stood at 175,233,000 feet, five times the pre-war figure. From

this time onward the industry could depend on at least 35 per cent of its gross income

arising from foreign sources. With the formerly powerful industries of France and Italy

greatly reduced, the American companies found themselves in an unaccustomed position

of international supremacy.

Throughout the silent period the American industry received assistance in its foreign

operations from the Departments of State and Commerce. US consular offices co-

operated in gathering a wealth of information relevant to motion picture trade, including

audience preferences, conditions affecting exhibition, and activities of competitors. In

1927 Will Hays, president of the industry's trade association (the Motion Picture

Producers and Distributors of America), successfully lobbied Congress for the

establishment of a Motion Picture Department within the Department of Commerce, on

the grounds that movies acted as 'silent salesmen' of American goods to audiences world-

wide. Rewriting the nineteenth-century imperialist slogan that trade followed the flag,

Hays proclaimed that now 'Trade Follows the Films'. Indeed, it seems likely that

Hollywood's conspicuous display of material affluence was itself a factor attractive to

audiences, both at home and abroad.

PROTECTIONISM

While Hollywood's flair for unofficial advertising may have won it friends amongst

popular audiences and the US Congress, it also stirred up opposition to the American

product amongst foreign governments. In 1927 the British government expressed concern

that only 5 per cent of films shown in the British Empire were of Empire origin, while the

vast majority were American, reflecting American values and showcasing American

goods. A parliamentary inquiry concluded that the Empire would be better served by films

reflecting values and products of an Imperial stamp. Arguments about the cultural

influence of Hollywood were part of a pervasive discourse of antiAmericanism among

European cultural élites. Bourgeois cultural nationalists feared the homogenizing

influence of American mass culture, in which previously clear representations of class and

nationality, such as costume and gesture, became increasingly undifferentiated. Ironically,

the pervasiveness of Hollywood itself served as an impetus behind government initiatives

to support film-making in Britain, as was equally the case in many other countries. Quite

apart from ideological issues, large profits were at stake in box-office revenues: Britain

constituted the most lucrative market in the world outside the United States, generating

$165 million at the box-office in 1927. Its own level of film production in that year stood

at forty-four features (4.85 per cent of films shown), compared to the 723 (81 per cent)

that were imported from the USA. In France, the proportion of domestically produced

product exhibited was slightly higher, with 74 French features being shown (12.7 per

cent) compared with 368 American imports (63.3 per cent).

The only European nation in which domestic production exceeded imports in the late

1920s was Germany. Commercial film production had begun to develop in Germany from

about 1911, but it was not conspicuous amongst early European producers. During the

World War the country's isolation from French, British, Italian, and American sources of

film supply encouraged domestic production. With an eye to both the entertainment and

the propaganda values of the medium, the German government helped to underwrite the

development of the local industry. A merger of several companies brought about the

formation of the large combine Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, or Ufa, which was

secretly funded by the State. In addition to its studio facilities (which included a state-of-

the-art complex that was constructed in 1921 at Neubabelsberg near Potsdam) it also

served as a distributor, handling the products of other German studios in addition to its

own output. In the 1920s it continued to make capital acquisitions, including the Danish

company Nordisk and its foreign cinema circuits: unlike France, which by now

concentrated mainly on production for domestic consumption, Germany remained

committed to expansion in the foreign field. Indeed, it needed receipts from foreign

markets to support its level of production. The number of features produced peaked at 646

in 1921 (compared to 854 produced by Hollywood in that year), and thereafter declined to

about 200 films a year, or roughly a third of Hollywood's output, at the end of the decade.

Germany was at the forefront of initiatives that were designed to counter Hollywood's

hegemony in Europe. In 1925, when the American share of the German market was on the

increase, the government responded by instituting a 'contingent' plan that was designed to