>A good question is why they were a bit less resistant to European
>films back in the '60s and "70s. After all back then directors like
>Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, and Pasolini were all able to
>enjoy relatively healthy boxoffice in the US.
1. During the 60s & 70s, "national cinemas" outside the USA were not dead yet. To reproduce the excerpt from Thomas Elsaesser's "National Cinema and International Television: The Death of New German Cinema," _Global Television_ (ed., Cynthia Schneider & Brian Willis, NY & Cambridge, MA: The Wedge Press & The MIT Press, 1988):
***** The kind of protection which the _Autorenfilm_ received during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s was prescient in two ways: it subsidized a "national" film culture, but it also created institutional structures that may be able to withstand the onslaught of the new media more effectively if a political response can be backed by an economically practicable program concept. Politically, the New German Cinema was the result of lobbyists like Alexander Kluge finding a sympathetic ear among Social Democrat and Liberal parliamentarians, who then included the cinema in their policies of rewarding national prestige projects (along with museums, music festivals, theater events, and international sports). Practically, the New German Cinema was financed by television, via co-productions that could also pass as cinema both in the specialized markets and at national and international festivals....
This dual strategy -- of working with the structures of government and of television -- corresponded to a functional division in the purposes of the _Autorenfilm_, between its creation of a national cinema (which could range from re-presenting and re-writing national history, to the self-representation of special groups, such as women or gay subcultures) and its support of alternative forms of cinema altogether (avant-garde films, nonnarrative films, documentary, opera and music drama, dance theater, or film essays)....
...[With] this concept...[of the "author"], West Germany was, during most of the 1970s, ahead of the rest of Europe in subsidizing film. By the time of the third revision of the Film Subsidy Law in 1974, the German film funding system was quite finely tuned, combining federal and regional funding, automatic subsidy, and project subsidy with Kuratorium, television co-production, and Berlin-Effekt. This complex funding system gave German filmmakers a boost at all levels, and across the whole range of film forms and modes, from the medium-to-big budget prestige film like Fassbinder's _The Marriage of Maria Braun_ or Schlöndorff's _The Tin Drum_, to avant-garde and experimental films by Werner Schroeter, Herbert Achternbusch, Helke Sander, and Ulrike Ottinger.
So, why does it now seem as if the Germans "blew it"? France and Britain have learned from the German experience and are currently more successful in keeping a stake in the national market as well as breaking into the international market. The German cinema, despite its better-than-average chances, however, was unable to build on the real but brief breakthrough afforded by the _Autorenfilm_....
(Elsaesser 125-6) *****
I believe such subsidies still exist in many nations, but perhaps the level of state support has waned? In any case, subsidies & even import quotas have not prevented national markets from being dominated by Hollywood blockbusters & duds. Richard Collins writes in "Wall-to-Wall _Dallas_: The U.S.-U.K. Trade in Television," _Global Television_ (ed., Cynthia Schneider & Brian Willis, NY & Cambridge, MA: The Wedge Press & The MIT Press, 1988):
***** In 1925, Guback adds, 235 million feet of motion pictures were exported and 7 million feet imported by the United States. This American dominance in the world market for audiovisual information goods has been consolidated subsequently by successive innovations in technology and product and by raising the costs of production and therefore barriers to the entry of competitors to the market (the star system, sound, color, wide-screen, 3D, epic scale, special effects, and so on). In most European countries, a national-film production industry survives only through state subsidy and import quotas. The U.S. industry has very successfully exploited its major comparative advantage, the large size of its (rather chauvinistic) domestic market....
The large size of the U.S. domestic market, its resistance to penetration by foreign products, and the evolution of large firms capable of accommodating both great demand and considerable market capriciousness (of ten films, one may make very high profits, six may lose greater or lesser amounts, three may break even; thus long-term success will only be available to large-scale producers) has given the U.S. film and production industry very substantial advantages in the international audiovisual information goods markets. Varis has shown the United States' importation of foreign television programming to be exceptionally low (between 1 and 2 percent imports)....
...Film distribution in Europe was, and is, dominated by U.S. companies....The film exhibition sector in Europe expanded beyond the capacity of domestic producers and a conflict of interests developed between the domestic exhibition sector, enjoying a kind of comprador relationship with U.S. producers and distributors, and the domestic production sector. Exhibitors in Britain had to be compelled by quota legislation to exhibit British films -- their economic interests were in general better served by exhibiting imported material made with higher budgets and featuring international stars, and sold to exhibitors at low cost. (81-2) *****
In short, those who control _distribution_ -- American companies -- control what gets shown in theaters:
***** Why are we still dominated by Hollywood?
American films dominate British cinemas because US studios produce great popular entertainment -- and they have the money to hire the biggest stars, pay for huge marketing campaigns and influence the biggest chains of cinemas.
Despite the popularity of British films, only 20% of box-office takings comes from British films. Almost all the rest, nearly 80%, comes from films distributed by by five big US studios -- Buena Vista, Columbia, Fox, UIP and Warner.
The key problem for British film-makers is film distribution. They find it hard to compete with the Americans because of the different way the industry is structured in the two countries.
In Britain, films are created by relatively small production studios which do not have the resources to distribute and market their work.
To secure distribution in cinemas in Britain and abroad, they have to convince distribution companies -- of which the biggest are all controlled by US studios -- that their films are worth showing. Even when they succeed and the films make money, a lot of the profit goes to the distributors with no guarantee that it will be reinvested in British film.
In the United States, the film industry is dominated by large integrated studios. The same company makes, distributes and markets a film -- and probably owns a lot of the cinemas where it is shown.
These large US studios can undertake big-budget projects with the safety of knowing that the films are guaranteed to be shown in cinemas.
They have the strength to ensure distribution even for their B-movies, by cutting 'bundling' deals under which they allow a cinema to show a blockbuster only if it also shows some of the studio's lesser films. Three of the top six cinema operators in the UK (UCI, National Amusements and Warner) have strong ties to US studios.
Of course, if a UK film is backed by a US studio, then it will get wide distribution, as happened with The Full Monty.
If a British film-maker can't secure a distribution deal to have his or her film shown in enough cinemas, it simply won't be a hit. It will probably go on to do poorly when it is released as a video, since it won't have had much publicity. At the moment, about half the films made in the UK are never shown on the major cinema circuit.
The rise of multiplex cinemas may have added to the problem by driving smaller independent cinemas, which weren't so easily influenced by Hollywood, out of business. In the last three years, at least 60 smaller cinemas have had to close. The government realises that the lack of a strong UK-based film distributor is a problem. The industry hopes National Lottery funding may be used to create a UK film distributor.
29 June 1999
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/makingsense/britishfilm/faqs/hollywood.shtml> *****
2. During the 60s & 70s, there was an international political movement on the Left, which created milieus, cultures, institutions, & audiences -- as well as critics, directors, & critics-turned-directors -- necessary for favorable reception of works by the directors you mention & more. So much so that by the time of _Annie Hall_ (1977), Woody Allen could send up the ritual of dragging boyfriends/girlfriends to see films like Marcel Ophüls's _The Sorrow & the Pity_ (1971).
***** Annie: All right, what do you want to do? Alvy: I don't know now. You want to go to another movie? Let's go see The Sorrow and the Pity. Annie: Oh, come on. You've seen it. I'm not in the mood to see a four-hour documentary on Nazis. .... Alvy: Interestingly, however, I did run into Annie again. It was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She had moved back to New York. She was living in Soho with some guy. And when I met her, she was, of all things, dragging him in to see The Sorrow and the Pity, which I counted as a personal triumph. *****
3. During the 60s & 70s, European & Japanese cinemas were much more sexually adventurous than Hollywood movies. Going to avant-garde cinema back then meant going to enjoy erotica for intellectuals. To take an extreme example, there was (& is) no American counterpart to Nagisa Oshima's _In the Realm of the Senses_ (1976). To this day, it's more common to see full-frontal male nudes in Euro cinema than in American cinema. Other than the remaining taboo on penises, however, we get to relatively easily see a variety of sexual representations -- including extra-marital sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, S/M, etc. -- in American movies today. When Stanley Kubrick shot _Lolita_ (1962), in contrast, he could make it only as a black comedy of culture clashes with no explicit sex in it.
>Outside of the HK cinema there doesn't seem to be anybody who can
>penetrate the US market now a days.
Sadly no. Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan) is very well regarded by film critics everywhere, including American critics, but beyond a rare retrospective at this or that cinematheque, it is nearly impossible for American movie-goers to see his works. Here's an extended discussion of one of his films _A City of Sadness_: <http://cinemaspace.berkeley.edu/Papers/CityOfSadness/>. If you get a chance to see this on a large screen, don't miss it.
Abbas Kiarostami (Iran) is another name that comes to my mind, as far as critical acclaim is concerned. I doubt that he'll gain the same level of exposure as the French New Wave, the New German Cinema, etc. did, though.
Lesser known directors than them have no chance.
Lars von Trier, however, is bucking the trend of increasing American provincialism in movie-going culture, despite or perhaps because of his sly anti-Americanism (in _Europa_ [1991] & _Dancer in the Dark_ [1999]). What's interesting about his works is that he is creating an artistic expression of _European_ cinema (beyond _national_ cinemas) befitting the integration & expansion of the European market (for better or worse), a project that Krzysztof Kieslowski failed to accomplish with his sadly mediocre _Three Colors: Blue, White, Red_ (1993-4, the French, Polish, & Swiss co-production).
Lars von Trier is a smart cookie, though he's too technically sophisticated for his own good.
Yoshie