Nationhood and national identity: National Cinematograph.

What could be said to be the lowest common denominator, the default values of national cinematograph? It may mean nothing more historically precise or metaphysically profound than the economic conditions under which moviemakers in a given country try to work. It functions as part of an industry required to turn a profit, as artisans selling individually crafted objects in a volatile market, or as artists, sponsored by the state and its cultural institutions, representing a cultural vision.

WIM WENDERS

Nevertheless, when looked at as an industry, the cinematograph is not a national, but an international business, in which, as it happens, different nations do not compete on the same terms. For instance, the only cinematograph which for long stretches of its history has been able to operate profitably as a national one - the American cinematograph - is not as a rule referred to as a national cinematograph at all, but has become synonymous with the international movie business, if not with "the cinematograph" tout court. It suggests that "national cinematograph" is actually not descriptive, but the subordinate term within a binary pair whose prevalent and referred point (whether repressed or implied) is always Hollywood. If this international movie business draws attention to the economic realities of movie production in competition for the world's spectators, the term "national cinematograph" may disguise another binarism: an au-teur cinematograph as sketched above can be more virulently opposed to its own national cinematograph commercial movie industry than it is to Hollywood movies. Such was the case with the nouvelle vague or the second generation of New German moviemakers: the "politique des auteurs" of Truffaut, Rohmer and Chabrol, or Wim Wenders' and Fassbinder's cinephilia were based on a decided preference of Hollywood over their own national cinematograph.

The paradox arises because national cinematograph presupposes a perspective that takes the point of view of production - the moviemakers', the movie industry's -when promoting or selling movies at international festivals. What is commonly not included in the meaning are the preferences of audiences, and therefore, the "nationality" of a country's movie culture. A moment's reflection shows that no one who goes to the cinematograph has a "national" movie culture; or rather, everyone's national movie culture as opposed to a national cinematograph is both multi-national and cross-generic: high-profile Hollywood block-busters, movies on release in the art-cinematographs around town, star vehicles and movies d'auteur. For a country's movie culture, national provenance is important in much the same way as the label stitched on my sweater or trainers: I show my brand loyalty and advertise my taste. The situation is altogether different if we were considering television, where there is indeed something like a "national audience," just as there is "national television." But precisely to the degree that one is talking about a "national cinematograph," one is not talking about audiences, but moviemakers: a fact that runs the risk of leaving one with a one-sided, if not esoteric point of view. For in the international movie business, the idea of national cinematograph has a very contradictory status: While Hollywood product dominates most countries' domestic markets, as well as leading internationally, each national cinematograph is both national and international, though in different areas of its sphere of influence. Nationally, it participates in the popular or literary culture at large (the New German Cinematograph's predilection for movieed literature, the intellectual cult status of French directors such as Bresson, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer; the acceptance of Fellini, Antonioni, or Francesco Rosi as Italy's sacred monsters). Internationally, national cinematographs used to have a generic function in the way that a French, Swedish or Italian movie conveyed a set of expectations for the general audience which were mirror images to those of Hollywood genres. Italian cinematograph used to mean big busts and bare thighs - and this in movies that the more high-brow critics thought of as the glories of Neo-Realism: ROME OPEN CITY, OSSESSIONE, RISO AMARO. As the ubiquitous Guilio Andreotti recommended, when he was Italy's movie czar in the late 1940s: Meno stracci, pui gambe (less rags, more legs).4

From the perspective of Hollywood, on the other hand, it makes little difference whether one is talking about the Indian cinematograph or the Dutch cinematograph, the French cinematograph or the Chilean cinematograph: none is a serious competitor for America's domestic output, but each national cinematograph is a "market" for American movies, with Hollywood practices and norms having major consequences for the national production sector. In most countries this has led to different forms of protectionism, bringing into play state intervention and government legislation, but as a rule to very little avail, especially from the time that the different national cinematographs, nevertheless equal they may seem before Hollywood, are of course emphatically unequal among themselves, and locked into yet another form of competition with each other when they enter the European market.

Yet paradoxically, a national cinematograph is precisely something which relies for its existence on a national exhibition sector at least as much as it does on a national production sector; without Hollywood, no national exhibition sector; without a national exhibition sector, i.e., cinematographs, whether privately run or state-subsidized prepared to show independent releases, you cannot have a national cinematograph. This is a truth that some national cinematographs discovered to their cost: until an American major had put money into distributing a Wenders or a Herzog movie world-wide, their movies could not be seen by German audiences. In a sense, they had to become Hollywood (or at least Miramax or Buena Vista), before they could return home to Europe as representatives of their national cinematograph.