Foreign films once enjoyed a position of prominence on American theater screens. By the start of World War I, however, the United States' film industry was strong enough to challenge that foreign presence and foreign films in America have been insignificant ever since. For about a century, the Hollywood cartel has dominated the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies domestically and around the world. This work traces the history of the foreign film in America from its domination in the early days to its low standing in the present, looking at the attempts made by foreign producers to increase their presence on American cinema screens, the responses by Hollywood to those attempts, and the oligopoly of Hollywood's few producers. The work discusses the cultural differences between foreign artistic expression and the commercialism of the American film and analyzes Hollywood's explanations for the lack of a foreign presence: Americans have "unique" tastes, they don't like subtitles, foreign films are immoral or badly made, trade union pressure, and so on. An appendix detailing the all-time gross earnings of foreign-language films and a full bibliography conclude the work, which is illustrated with stills and posters.

Largely shut out of American theaters since the 1920s, foreign films such as Open City, Bicycle Thief, Rashomon, The Seventh Seal, Breathless, La Dolce Vita and L’Avventura played after World War II in a growing number of art houses around the country and created a small but influential art film market devoted to the acquisition, distribution, and exhibition of foreign-language and English-language films produced abroad. Nurtured by successive waves of imports from Italy, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Japan, and the Soviet Bloc, the renaissance was kick-started by independent distributors working out of New York; by the 1960s, however, the market had been subsumed by Hollywood. From Roberto Rossellini’s Open City in 1946 to Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris in 1973, Tino Balio tracks the critical reception in the press of such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Tony Richardson, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, and Milos Forman. Their releases paled in comparison to Hollywood fare at the box office, but their impact on American film culture was enormous. The reception accorded to art house cinema attacked motion picture censorship, promoted the director as auteur, and celebrated film as an international art. Championing the cause was the new “cinephile” generation, which was mostly made up of college students under thirty. The fashion for foreign films depended in part on their frankness about sex. When Hollywood abolished the Production Code in the late 1960s, American-made films began to treat adult themes with maturity and candor. In this new environment, foreign films lost their cachet and the art film market went into decline.

With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.

While Hollywood contends that the domination of American films abroad is due to the quality of its product, the truth is that the major American movie studios have established a virtual worldwide monopoly on the distribution and exhibition of the film industry. The United States government has greatly aided Hollywood's effort's and continues to do so.The U.S. governemnt first became heavily involved with the film industry in 1916 when U.S. consuls were instructed to report on the market for American movies. The government, in turn, made this information available to the industry. Eight companies (MGM, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, RKO, Warner Bros., Universal, United Artists, and Columbia) used the government information to establish a virtual cartel. This work examines the practices of this cartel in its various forms, how it came to dominate the industry worldwide, and the role the U.S. government has played in advancing its monopolistic practices.

There is nothing so engaging, so true to life as film to transport students to unfamiliar places. This textbook introduces foreign cultures and global concepts through 13 award-winning films from around the world: Osama (Afghanistan); Persepolis (Iran/France); Water (India); Beijing Bicycle (China); Tokyo Sonata (Japan); Tsotsi (South Africa); Hotel Rwanda (Rwanda); War Dance (Uganda); Central Station (Brazil); March of the Penguins (Antarctica/France); Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Germany); The Counterfeiters (Austria); Pearl (U.S.A., Chickasaw Nation). Each is chosen for its richness as a basis for discussions in history, geography, economics, government, literature, music, and art. This multi-disciplinary primer encourages critical thinking and group activities and offers new perspectives on international affairs. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

While a few select foreign filmmakers have been widely recognized for their contributions to Hollywood, scores more have gone largely unrecognized. Arranged alphabetically, this volume provides detailed information on the filmmakers and their films.