Vive la Diff�rence: Hollywood and France, 1914-1945

Abstract

France in the early decades of the 20th century underwent a profound identity crisis. Torn between tradition and modernity, the country perceived itself to be isolated internationally and threatened politically, economically, and culturally by both internal and external forces. In French eyes, the United States moved rapidly from an ally to an adversary that not only opposed France on major foreign policy issues after World War I, but threatened the European continent both economically and culturally. For broad segments of the French elite, the United States represented modernity – and everything that was wrong with it. Contributing powerfully to anti-American sentiment in France were cultural exports from the United States, especially motion pictures. Hollywood was, for French cultural nationalists, both a symbol of what they disliked about the United States – a society shaped by the assembly-line and, hence, once characterized by intellectual, spiritual, and artistic mediocrity – and a threat to French culture and the very existence of the French movie industry. Hollywood achieved a dominant position in the French (and world) market during the war and maintained that position in the inter-war period. French audiences, in general, applauded American films and were enthusiastic about American film stars, especially those who visited Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, but French film critics tended to regard Hollywood movies as shallow, artificial, and, because they came off studio assembly-lines, irritatingly repetitive. The advent of sound proved to be a boon to French filmmakers, but Hollywood continued to dominate French screens, a situation temporarily ended only by the outbreak of a new war in 1939. Throughout the post-1917 period, including the World War II years, Hollywood studios themselves were a microcosm of the cultural war as French movie personnel who emigrated to the United States found themselves caught up in a factory-like system that emphasized standardized products geared for a mass market and left little room for artistic creativity.