“FILM EUROPE”

After World War I, many countries struggled against American films’ continued domination of their markets. At first, nations competed against each other as well as against Hollywood, hoping to prosper in the international film market. The German government fostered the growth of its film industry by continuing the wartime ban on imported films. In France, despite many efforts, adverse conditions kept production low. For a few years, Italy continued to produce many films but could not regain its strong pre-1914 position. Other countries sought to establish even a small amount of steady production.

Postwar Animosities Fade

This competition was exacerbated by lingering animosities. Great Britain and France were determined not to let German production expand abroad. Theater owners in both countries agreed not to show German

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Exclusivile

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NOSFERATU

LE VAMPIRE

LE FILM LE PLUS IMPRESSIONNANT

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CINE OPERA, BOULEVARD DES CAPUCINES

DES LE 27 OCTOBRE

8.1 A 1922 French advertisement for R W. Murnau’s Nosferatu called it “more powerful than Caligari."

Films after the war, for a period of five years in Britain and for fifteen in France. Unofficial boycotts existed in Belgium and other countries that had suffered during the war.

Yet by 1921, glowing reviews of German films like Lubitsch’s Madame Dubarry and Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari made French and British audiences feel that they were missing important developments. In November, Louis Delluc held a Paris screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (at a charity benefit to forestall objections). The film created a sensation, and a distributor quickly bought the French rights. Caligari opened in March 1922 and became an enormous hit. The exhibitors’ ban was forgotten, and a vogue for German Expressionist films developed (8.1). In late 1922, Madame Dubarry premiered in London, breaking that country’s boycott. Postwar hostility was waning.

Moreover, by the early 1920s, European producers realized that American competition was too great for any one country to counter. The United States, with around 15,000 theaters, was the world’s largest film market. Thus American producers garnered a huge, predictable income from domestic rentals alone. They could afford to sell films cheaply abroad because most foreign income was pure profit. Commentators noted, however, that if the movie theaters of all European countries were gathered into a single continental market, it would be comparable in size to that of the United States. What if European film industries could cooperate by guaranteeing to import each other’s films? European films might make as much money as Hollywood films did. Then their budgets could be raised, their production values would improve, and they might even be able to compete with American films in other world markets. This idea was gradually formulated as the “pan-European” cinema, or “Film Europe.”

Concrete Steps toward Cooperation

By 1922 to 1923, European film trade journals were calling for such cooperation, and, in 1924, the first steps were taken to create a practical cooperation among European producing nations. Erich Pommer, head of the powerful German company Ufa, concluded a pact with Louis Aubert, a major Parisian distributor. Ufa agreed to release in Germany French films provided by the Aubert company, in exchange for Aubert’s distribution of Ufa films in France. Previously, French-German deals had meant the sale of a film or two, but now mutual distribution became regular.

The Ufa-Aubert deal attracted wide notice. Pommer declared, “I think that European producers must at last think of establishing a certain cooperation among themselves. It is imperative to create a system of regular trade which will enable the producers to amortise their films rapidly. It is necessary to create ‘European films,’ which will no longer be French, English, Italian, or German films, but entirely ‘continental’ films.”1 The Ufa-Aubert agreement provided the model for later transactions. Exchange of films among France, Germany, Britain, and other countries increased during the second half of the 1920s.

Pommer’s statement that producers should make “European films” reflects other tactics used to increase the international circulation of films. Firms imported stars, directors, and other personnel to give an international flavor to their output. Similarly, a coproduction, in which a film would be financed and made by companies in two countries, guaranteed release in at least those two markets. A combination of these tactics might increase a film’s breadth of circulation even further.

For example, British producer-director Graham Wilcox made Decameron Nights (1924), with Ufa providing its studio facilities and half the financing (8.2). Actors from several countries participated, including American star Lionel Barrymore, English actress Ivy Close, and Werner Krauss (famous as Dr. Caligari). The

8.2 Ufa’s large, technically sophisticated studios permitted the construction of epic-style sets of Renaissance Venice for the British-German coproduction, Decameron Nights.

Result was highly popular in several countries, including the United States. Producers and filmmakers from abroad often worked in Germany, since the production facilities there were the best in Europe. In 1924, the young Alfred Hitchcock began working as a designer on British films made at Ufa, where he watched Mur-nau working on The Last Laugh (p. 110). His first two films as a director, The Pleasure Garden (1925) and The Mountain Eagle (1926), were British-German co productions shot in Germany.

Success Cut Short

By mid-decade, Germany’s film industry was the leader in an increasingly cooperative pan-European effort. To be sure, many big coproductions failed to gain the anticipated international success, since cautious producers tended to use standard formulas. “International appeal” also too often meant imitations of Hollywood-style films, with a loss of the distinctive national qualities that attracted viewers to movies like Caligari and Potemkin. Tactics like coproductions and international casts, however, gradually made European films more competitive internationally. Cross-border arrangements created Spanish-French, German-Swedish, and other multinational films. The wider circulation of films allowed production budgets to rise.

The Film Europe effort also led to import quotas in some countries. After Germany lifted its import ban in 1921, it had strictly limited the number of films admitted to the country. In 1925, it changed to a system whereby a distributor could import one film for every German film it had circulated the previous year. France imitated this plan in 1928 by introducing a modest limit of seven imported films for each French one distributed.

In 1927, Great Britain instituted a cautious quota calling for a small percentage of British footage to be distributed and exhibited in the United Kingdom. Over the years, this percentage was to increase gradually, allowing the production sector to grow to meet the demand. Even countries with more limited production created quotas. In Portugal, for example, one-tenth of screen time had to be reserved for domestic films—usually newsreels or travelogues preceding an imported feature. Although these quotas were purportedly directed against all imported films, it was common knowledge that their main target was Hollywood films. Such quotas contributed to the Film Europe drive.

Between 1924 and 1927, the Europeans, led by Germany, Britain, and France, built the base for a continental market. Slowly their efforts reduced the number of American film imports and replaced them with European ones. This table shows the percentage of feature films released in Germany, France, and Britain in 1926 and 1929, by the main countries of origin.

PERCENT OF FILMS RELEASED IN

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

GERMANY 1926 1929

FRANCE 1926 1929

BRITAIN 1926 1929

Germany, already the strongest film industry, benefited most from cooperative efforts. France, struggling in a production crisis, gained least; the decline in American films there was largely offset by other imports. Still, Film Europe might gradually have improved Europe’s situation had the effort continued.

Abrupt changes cut it short, such as the introduction of sound in 1929. Dialogue created language barriers, and each country’s producers began to hope that they could succeed locally because English-language imports would decline. Several countries did benefit from audiences’ desire for sound films in their own languages, and some national industries became major forces as a result of sound. Competitiveness among European nations reappeared.

In addition, the Depression began to hit Europe in 1929. Faced by hard times, many businesses and

8.3 Expressionist mise-en-scene in L'Herbier’s Don Juan et Faust.

8.4 A corner in a room of Usher’s mansion in Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher displays the influence of German Expressionism.

8.5 In The Street, Impressionist-style superimpositions depict the hero’s visions of delights that await him in the city.

Governments became more nationalistic and less interested in international cooperation. The rise of extreme left-wing and right-wing dictatorships in Europe and Asia increased divisiveness and territorial rivalries, a trend that would eventually lead to another global war. Film Europe was moribund by the early 1930s, but some of its effects lingered. Some films still circulated, and firms collaborated on productions.