Hollywood Conquers the World

[Gretchen Lynne Busl]

{enormous snip}
Glad to know you actually remembered what was in your "History of
Narrative Film" textbook. ;)

*>http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/2153<*
Haven of Fools: Film Lover's Respite

[Dragan Antulov]

On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 19:09:00 GMT, mod...@tiac.net (Modemac) wrote:

>Last summer, as INDEPENDENCE DAY was overloading our senses, a discission
>flared up in rec.arts.movies.current-films about how the movie is a piece
>of blatant pro-American propaganda. One aspect of the conversation drew
>some notable flames:
>
>"It's interesting to note that Hollywood has practically owned most of
>the movie audiences around the world for years. American movies have
>such a stranglehold on foreign markets that in some countries, the
>local film industries barely exist at all. With INDEPENDENCE DAY,
>Hollywood forces this message of America as the Greatest Nation In The
>World down the throats of moviegoers worldwide. 'We save the world
>and you love us for it!'"

[snip]

I must disagree. Sometimes local Davids manage to beat Hollywood
Goliath. In 1993 JURASSIC PARK was interesting example:

France - Les Visiteurs
New Zealand - Once Werre Warriors
Poland - Psy
Serbia - Mi nismo andjeli

And, of course, in 1996 KAKO JE POCEO RAT NA MOM OTOKU managed to beat
ID4 in Croatia.

Dragan Antulov
Fido: 2:381/100
E-Mail: dragan....@st.tel.hr
dragan....@altbbs.fido.hr

[Peter Reiher]

Modemac wrote:
>
> The responses to this statement suggested that audiences around the world
> don't have to watch ID4, or Hollywood movies in general; they always have
> their choice of local films to watch as well. However, the truth to this
> matter is that foreign audiences often *don't* have a choice: they either
> have to watch movies from Hollywood, or they don't see any movies at all.
>
> A very brief synopsis on the effect Hollywood has had on worldwide film
> industry over the past half century:
>
> The end of World War II left the European film market in shambles.
. . .

> Hollywood filled this gap by flooding the Continent
> with movies.
>
> This had a devasting effect on the European film markets -- especially the
> German film industry.

One might argue that what really devastated the German film industry,
in the long run, was the Nazi's policies that caused them to lose
such filmmakers as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Siodmak, Sirk, etc.
Going into the thirties, Germany had an extremely strong contingent
of directors, most of whom left Germany well before the war. For
once, this wasn't because of money or bigger budgets working with
the studios, it was because they preferred not to be killed. German
cinema maintained its market till after the war largely on the basis
of authoritarian policies, not local preferences.

It's interesting, by the way, that apart from France, perhaps the
strongest local cinema in Europe today is Germany's. Starting with
local comedies, and now moving into more ambitious films, Germany
regularly puts two or three of its own films into the local top
ten box office list. This phenomenon is important enough that
US studios (Disney, in particular) is providing some support for
making German films for local consumption.

Italy, too, maintains a locally popular cinema. Of course France
does, and always has. Japan does, too. Beyond those, it's somewhat
spotty, leaving aside India, Hong Kong, and the Arab nations, all
of which are (currently) dominated by local production. (It's my
understanding that all three are showing signs of cracking and
falling under the sway of Hollywood, now. Hong Kong had massive
defections, for obvious reasons, and has failed to renew its cinema
with new, locally popular directions for films. American studios
have finally found a way to make their films popular in India. And
Egypt's long-standing cinema, which supplied the Arab world for
decades, is crumbling.)

>
> In nearly all of the non-militarized nations of the world (the Cold War
> caused Hollywood to keep its films out of Communist Bloc nations),

But now that the films can get in, those markets, too, are falling.
Even China is succombing. Even ten years ago, when US releases in
China were as rare as hen's teeth, while I was there the educated
young people in Shanghai all wanted to talk about Rambo and Madonna,
who they'd seen on video. Grosses of US films from Chinese release
are finally beginning to show some signs of matching the "1 billion
potential customer" siren song of China.

> Hollywood has dmininated the market because it has more money and more
> resources than any of the domestic film markets of those countries.

I think the key element has been film content and production values.
That is, of course, a consequence of greater resources, but it's
simply true that few other countries have industries that could even
make a film like "Jurassic Park" or "Batman." They just don't have
the infrastructure to do so, nor the capital to finance the film.
Even if the playing field were completely level, in terms of
distribution, advertising, access to theaters, etc., I suspect that
"The Rock" beats "A Prisoner of the Mountains" three falls out of three
in practically every country in the world. Americans aren't the
only ones who like to see heros shoot things amid lots of big
explosions.

> It's interesting to note that various outbreaks of creativity in foreign
> locales have largely come as responses to the influx of Hollywood movies.
> Examples of this can be seen in Germany as noted above, or with Italian
> "neo-realism" of the 1940s and 1950s and the French "new wave" of the
> 1960s.

The French New Wave is usually regarded more as a response to
French film tradition, rather than American. In fact, the great
figures of the French New Wave were, for the most part, big
admirers of many of the leading Hollywood directors - Hawks, Hitchcock,
Ford, Ray, etc. The New Wave was a revolution against French
cinematic stodginess, not American film.

>
> As a result, audiences have been effectively trained to watch Hollywood
> movies and avoid their own films, in a manner similar to the way American
> audiences shun foreign films. The film industries of other countries
> aren't able to survive long without support from their own government, and
> in the long run it looks as though Hollywood's dominance of the world's
> markets will continue for the forseeable future.

Probably true. The French film industry makes periodic stabs at
international popularity - "The Fifth Element" being the most recent.
It may look like a Hollywood film, walk like a Hollywood film,
and quack like a Hollywood film, but it's actually made by Gaumont,
by a French director, with French money (mostly - Columbia ponied
up dollars for the US distribution rights). But the French lack the
capital and the style of directors (and the filmmaking culture) that
would allow them to crank out large numbers of that kind of film.
Fundamentally, most important figures in French film don't want to
make the kind of movie they would need to make. They want to convince
the world that they should be watching the sort of film French
directors like to make, such as "A Heart in Winter," "Wild Reeds,"
or "La Ceremonie." Let's face it, day laborers in Bangkok would
much rather watch Sylvester Stallone blow something up than listen
to French intellectuals suffer emotionally. (Don't take it as
an artistic criticism of those films - personally, I'd happily trade
all the Hollywood blockbusters of the summer for a good Rohmer film.)

Had conditions been right, Hong Kong would have had a shot at Hollywood,
but the ever-impending takeover by China ensured that no one would
make the kind of vast infusion of capital into the industry to give
it the infrastructure required. (They had the directors and actors
they needed.) Now their creative resources are scattered, largely
to the US.

No one else is in any position to make a challenge. Long term, the
best shot is China, by combining the remnants of the Hong Kong industry
with their strong set of prestige directors from the mainland. Doing
so, however, would require an opening up and freeing of the industry
that China currently looks unwilling to do. Yet again they pulled
a film out of Cannes, and it's practically a given that any strong
mainland film that comes out was banned in its own country. You
can't take over the international market without giving producers
and directors pretty complete control, and the current Chinese
administration won't do that.
--
Peter Reiher
rei...@cs.ucla.edu
<http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/reiher>

[Michael Jennings]

In article <33A020AB...@cs.ucla.edu>,

Peter Reiher <rei...@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>
>Probably true. The French film industry makes periodic stabs at
>international popularity - "The Fifth Element" being the most recent.
>It may look like a Hollywood film, walk like a Hollywood film,
>and quack like a Hollywood film, but it's actually made by Gaumont,
>by a French director, with French money (mostly - Columbia ponied
>up dollars for the US distribution rights). But the French lack the

Actually, I didn't really think it looked, walked and quacked
like a Hollywood film. I thought that the production design, constuming
and even the plot, had certain quirkiness about them that didn't strike
me as typically Hollywood, and did strike me as in keeping with some recent
French films, 'City of Lost Children' perhaps. They were on
the whole very silly, but I didn't think that they were silly in quite
the same way that Hollywood would have done it. Certainly there are other
European companies that are making films set in America for the American
market that are indistinguishable from Hollywood product. Polygram comes
to mind, for instance. However, I didn't think that The Fifth Element was
quite in that category.

Michael.
--
Michael Jennings
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
The University of Cambridge. mj...@damtp.cambridge.ac.uk

"`I need every aluminum can you can find! And duct tape!"