5 - Millions like Us: National Cinema as Popular Cinema

Summary

At the end of his essay on “The Concept of National Cinema,” Andrew Higson asks: “What is a national cinema if it doesn't have a national audience?” Throughout most of the world, Hollywood is popular cinema and, in countries with large film industries, the national cinema usually seeks to become popular by complex strategies that involve both differentiating its films from, and competing with, those of Hollywood. As to British cinema, box-office figures show that the national audience prefers Hollywood films, although the extent of this preference has often been exaggerated.

As Thomas Elsaesser has insisted, “Hollywood can hardly be conceived, in the context of a ‘national’ cinema, as totally Other, since so much of any nation's film culture is implicitly ‘Hollywood.’” The cultural dynamics at work are described by Tom Ryall when he points out that “British film genres, although developed in the context of the national culture, were addressed to audiences steeped in the ‘foreign culture’ of Hollywood cinema.” Even when British films are not partially or completely funded by Hollywood studios, British filmmakers are aware that they must attract audiences whose expectations have been shaped by their experience of Hollywood films. In these circumstances, the drive for commercial success is often seen as a denial of the distinctive characteristics of the national culture.

These considerations complicate the traditional approach to national cinema discussed in the Introduction. If we study a national cinema to discover what Siegfried Kracauer called “the psychological pattern of a people,” what does it mean if the people spend most of their time watching films from another national cinema? The problem is that “people” and “nation” are not synonymous.