The Social Science Library » Booming the Film Business: The Historical Specificity of Early French Cinema

Booming the Film Business: The Historical Specificity of Early French Cinema

Author(s)	Abel, Richard
Abstract	Early French film, especially as exemplified in PathÃƒÂ©’s company, whose capital came from “first world” countries, was used largely as a means of disseminating colonial propaganda to the “third world.” Using French culture and humor, the industry moved to export their values and desirability to Africa and Asia. More than simply a tool to be used abroad, French film in the early 20th century was also a means of ensuring that France became the nation-state that the Third Republic wanted. The new mass culture of France directed the cinema to portray images of the expected behavior of citizens, including the bourgeois consumption of material goods and the desired cultural morality of the new France. Ultimately, the French government established the cinema as an intellectual property of the film’s author, creating cinema as the new artistic export of France and solidifying the French cinema as one of the influential cultural powers of the 20th century.
IssueNo
Pages	109-124
Article	Access to Article
Source	Silent Film
VolumeNo
PubDate	December1995
ISBN_ISSN	0813522269
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Booming the Film Business: The Historical Specificity of Early French Cinema