Selling Hollywood to the World: US and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920–1950 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 4/25/2002
EAN 9780521651561, ISBN10: 0521651565
Hardcover, 398 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The global expansion of Hollywood and American popular culture in the first decades of the twentieth century met with strong opposition throughout the world. Determined to defeat such resistance, the Hollywood moguls created a powerful trade organization that worked closely with the US State Department in an effort to expand the American film industry's dominance worldwide. This book offers insight into and analysis of European efforts to overcome the American film industry's pre-eminence. It focuses particularly on Britain, Hollywood's largest overseas market of the interwar years; France, a nation with an alternative vision of cinema; and Belgium, which was entrusted by the Vatican with coordination of the international movement against depravity in films. In contributing to the understanding of American popular culture at home and abroad, this study demonstrates Hollywood's role in orchestrating the American Century.
List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. The United States
1. The domestic roots of Hollywood's foreign policy
censorship and corporatism in the formation of the MPPDA, 1921–41
2. Hollywood and the State department
overseas expansion and America's subversion
3. The MPAA and the State department
order and autonomy in the postwar world
Part II. Great Britain
4. Grierson, the documentary spirit and the projection of Britain
5. The Korda road to riches, recovery and ruin
6. The age of rank
7. The US-UK film conflict
the fading dream of mastering Hollywood
Part III. Two Continental Case Studies
Belgium and France
8. Belgium and the making of an international Catholic film movement
9. France and resistance to Hollywood
empire, artisans and the state
10. France and the politics of state intervention
Conclusion
Notes
Selected bibliography
Filmography
Index.