Negotiating culture: Hollywood and the renewal of French cinema, 1945--1954

In the late 1940s, the difficulties of postwar reconstruction and Hollywood's new insistence on exports presented a formidable challenge to French hopes for maintaining a strong national film industry. This study examines the cultural and political battles surrounding the importation of American motion pictures into postwar France and demonstrates how protecting and "defending" French cinema became such an integral part of French national identity. It concentrates on two major aspects of the Franco-American film trade: negotiating strategies in two key trade agreements (the 1946 Blum-Byrnes Accords and the 1948 Paris Accords) and the reception and impact of American films in France among industry professionals, critics, and the public.; I argue that trade negotiations, industry reactions, and critical responses to the presence of American films on French screens were primarily motivated not by Cold War politics, as commonly believed, but by economic and professional self-interest. Although the professional debates regarding cinema had little immediate impact on the general public, they led to the development of a discourse on cinema as a cultural heritage to be protected and, subsequently, policy initiatives appropriate to this objective: the Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC), the first Loi d'aide, and European co-production agreements. But the debate also produced less quantifiable means of revitalization for the national industry. For example, by inspiring a new school of film criticism that culminated in the founding of the legendary Cahiers du cinema , American films could be said to have led, at least indirectly, to the "New Wave" of filmmakers that emerged in the 1960s.; Moreover, the issues and conflicts arising out of this debate extend beyond their effects upon French filmmaking to address fundamental concerns of contemporary French society including questions of Americanization and the role of the state in cultural production. In successfully challenging the dominance of American motion pictures in its home market, France established a critical precedent in the negotiation of cultural industries. The fiercely contested issue of "cultural exception," which emerged during the 1993 GATT negotiations, is just one example of the continuing vital interest in understanding this important area of cultural history.