The recovery of the Hollywood industry during the late 1970s (see Chapter 22) had varied effects on other countries. Hollywood blockbusters benefited local distributors and exhibitors, but they presented formidable competition for local production. Some foreign filmmakers tried to imitate the U. S. movie product—a high-cost strategy that seldom paid off—while others tried to differentiate the local product from Hollywood offerings, just as German Expressionist and Italian Neorealist cinema had created distinctive “national schools.” Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, various new waves and new cinemas emerged in Germany, the USSR, and elsewhere.
Because local resources could not match Hollywood’s big budgets, European producers pooled their resources in coproductions. The films were internationally financed, made by creative personnel drawn from several countries, and designed for film festivals and overseas markets. Increasingly, independent production companies would be assisted not only by cooperative national governments but by the European Union and media conglomerates with interests in publishing, music, television, and other leisure-time industries.
In eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, most filmmakers proceeded cautiously during the 1970s, working within political dictates. Only Poland saw a striking revival of filmmaking energy, born out of the political struggles of the Solidarity movement. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s strategic withdrawal of support from communist regimes in eastern Europe accelerated their collapse. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s policies freed filmmakers from seventy years of censorship, but his inability to cure the ailing economy confronted filmmakers with probems of privatization, a decrepit infrastructure, and audiences eager to see American films. Nations freed from Soviet domination sought to enter
The international cinema market, and eastern Europe grew closer to the West.
World History
