France and the US are looked upon today as cinematic leaders, though in very different ways. Hollywood increasingly dominates the global movie market, most commonly with technically brilliant action spectacles, to such an extent that film production in many countries is disappearing. France's more artful and deliberative style of filmmaking has become an endangered species against the American juggernaut.
In England, where there is no strong national production, the indigenous film industry is suffering. But France's use of legislation to keep its film culture healthy makes the French film industry a unique example of evolution in the face of competition. Even within this formalized structure, there is a trend towards higher-budget films that is directly linked to the increased popularity of the American product amongst French moviegoers. The first big step France has made towards direct competition with Hollywood came this February with the release of Ast?©rix et Ob?©lisque Contre C?©sar.
The French regard film as an art form and a cultural extension of a country's distinct personality. Accordingly, in the late '50s, Andre Malraux, the first French minister of culture, established the now famous "avance sur recettes," a tax on movie tickets to help finance independent films, administered by the Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC). The bigger the box-office, the more funds there are to distribute back to the filmmakers. Considering that, in France, box-office is measured by admissions (by the number of people who come, rather than the dollars they spend), this assigns a deep and nationalistic significance to overall attendance. Ironically, thanks to the tax on tickets, French filmmakers benefit from audiences attracted to the theaters by American blockbusters.
The French government has subsidized its movie industry for years, currently to the tune of $250 million each year. When compared to what Hollywood is prepared to spend on a big-budget movie complete with special effects and big names, however, $250 million seems like a drop in the bucket. The Hollywood blockbuster Men in Black, which earned almost $6 million admissions in France, cost $90 million alone to produce.
the French film industry is the largest and most profitable in Europe, today it occupies a distant second place to the US. Although critics have long regarded French films as a form of high art, these days they aren't filling the theaters - not even in France.
In order to compete with Hollywood's financial powerhouse, French cinema will have to continue to reinvent itself as it has done over the last century. The nature of this renaissance, however, is much more commercial than France may be comfortable with. As the first step towards a commercialized industry, the new French movie Ast?©rix has the biggest budget of any French film at $75 million. While this surpasses even Indochine, $75 million still pales in comparison to what blockbusters cost in Hollywood. American filmmaker George Lucas spent $110 million alone making the upcoming Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace, which opened May 19th.
Ast?©rix has a star-studded cast led by Gerard Depardieu as beefy, boar-munching Ob?©lisque, top French comic actor Christian Clavier playing Ast?©rix, and supermodel Laetitia Casta as the luscious Falbala. Italy's Roberto Benigni, who wowed audiences last year with Life is Beautiful, plays a devious Roman plotting the downfall of the Gauls. Ast?©rix also marks a pivotal turning point for technological advances in French cinema, by incorporating previously unexplored techniques of computer animation.
There was a lot riding on the success of Ast?©rix, which opened to a deluge of bad reviews. "It would be a big blow to morale if this film fails," said film critic Christophe Narbonne in the leading French film magazine Premiere before the film's release. "Everyone is rooting for Ast?©rix."
For months, the French press had boosted the film, unseen, as the last best hope of French cinema in its losing battle against Hollywood domination. The criticism had a bitter tone to it, characterizing Ast?©rix as "dull", "lackluster" and "uninspiring." The sheer scale of the disappointment reflects the weight of patriotic expectations. "No French cinemagoer worthy of the name can be unaware that this is a matter of the highest national importance," stressed the French magazine Le Monde, describing the film as "annoying" and "worrying."
Despite being panned by the critics, Ast?©rix has broken records at the French box office with admissions reaching high into more than $8 million. In fact, a growth in the average budget of French films in general reflects a trend in France toward the bigger films that will counter the continuing growth of the American share in the French box office.
In France, as in the rest of Europe, indigenous cinema has suffered greatly as the American product increasingly dominates French screens. In 1998, French movies took only about one-quarter of national box-office earnings, with most of the rest going to the Hollywood blockbusters. In 1997, more than half of the top 20 grossing films in France were American, while only four were French.
Stateside, there are problems for the French product. The number of French movies distributed in America since 1970 has decreased by more than one-half. Ten years ago, only about 80 or 90 American films came to France, a number that has since almost doubled. Paradoxically, the rise of feature-length American independent films, such as director Kevin Smith's 1994 hit Clerks, which was made for $27,000 and grossed over $3 million, has hurt foreign product by claiming a greater portion of the box-office shared by independent foreign releases for American-made titles. Of the 500 or so movies released in North America last year, only 20 were French.
According to an article that appeared in Le Monde in April, 60 percent of Americans who watch foreign films live in Manhattan. This is in striking contrast to the French market for American films, where, according to V?©ronique Courtois, a native of France and professor of French at Tufts University, the popularity of American films is France is widespread. "In the suburbs especially, you see an explosion of megaplexes that show mainly American films." One possible reason for the troubled state of the market for a foreign-language product is subtitles. Americans are not accustomed to reading language onscreen, whereas in Europe people not only read but also speak several languages, and subtitling is the norm.
"The problem is more than just the subtitles," said French director Bertrand Tavernier in an interview with Box-office Magazine. "The problem for French films in the U.S. is that they do not bring easy answers. There is not an easy way out. In a country where there is a lot of unemployment, where there are political problems, and where the people feel insecure, films that are easy to watch are popular. They bring easy answers. French films are not built that way," he said.
According to Courtois, "France, more than any other European country doesn't want to accept American culture as it is." Extending beyond the movie industry, this reluctance to absorb American habits prompted the establishment of a governmental organization founded to regulate the onslaught of English vocabulary into the French language. The cultural differences between France and America can be held responsible for the disparity between the ultimate purpose of French versus American film.
In America, movies are treated largely as a commercial product and marketed for national and international trade. Hollywood's approach to cinema as commerce before culture is economically stronger due in part to the fact that America views culture, including movies, as a private affair, relatively separate from government. Blockbuster movies in America are mostly privately funded with the exception of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other such organizations going mostly to artistic independent films. The private funding allows American producers the freedom of much larger budgets than those seen in France.
Apart from the Hollywood blockbusters, the most popular films in France have been comedies such as 1993's Les Visiteurs. Directed by Jean-Marie Poir?©, the film stars Christian Clavier and Jean Reno as a medieval nobleman and his squire who are accidentally transported to contemporary times by a senile sorcerer. Unfortunately, French comedies do not translate well to the American sense of humor, with the noted exception of The Birdcage as a remake of the French film, La Cage aux Folles, considering that Les Visiteurs had over 13.5 million admissions in France and earned only $659 thousand in the US.
In terms of subject matter, European films have historically been equated with literature, dealing with intellectual and psychological subjects that Hollywood has deemed risky and tried to avoid.
French Twist, directed by Josiane Balasko in 1995, was a flop in the US, grossing only just over $1 million, but received wide success in France with almost four million admissions. Starring Victoria Abril, Josiane Balasko and Alain Chabat, French Twist is the story of a housewife who takes revenge on her adulterous husband by having an affair with a lesbian. Aware of the sensitivity of the American audience to the subject matter, and the expectation for a happy ending, Balasko actually made a new ending for the American version of the film. While arguably not as stereotypically intellectual as many French films, French Twist deals with issues of gender and sexuality that Hollywood tends to avoid, with the rare exception of a few larger-scale movies.
Recent films, like Object of My Affection in which Jennifer Aniston stars as a single mother-to-be in love with her gay roommate and In and Out, in which Kevin Kline plays an ambiguously gay teacher, both counter the position that American movie culture is unwilling to address issues of homosexuality on screen to the extent that French movie culture is.
To challenge the assumption that American audiences in general like to be easily entertained, many talented independent film directors have come out of America, such as veterans Woody Allen, Robert Altman and Martin Scorcese. Thanks to them, American film is now more varied than ever, as filmmakers with an auteuristic vision have found an alternative to Hollywood in an independent film scene that has rapidly evolved in the past decade or so.
For the first time, independent filmmakers are making feature-length films rather than documentaries that have received much success, both critically and financially. For example, The Brothers McMullen, directed in 1995 by independent filmmaker Edward Burns and made for only $238 thousand, was a success on all fronts. Starring Edward Burns, Mike McGlone and Jack Mulcahy as three brothers facing various crises with women and family, the film grossed over $10 million in the US and earned favorable reviews from the critics.
The general trend in Hollywood, however, is and historically has been to stick with the prefabricated formula for success that categorizes American cinema as a distraction from reality. "The expectations are different," Courtois says. "Americans want to be entertained. Culturally, you don't go to the movies for the same reasons." Whereas the spectators of an American film can sit back and relax in the theater, French films maintain a close relationship with the psychological probing of characters so prevalent in books and require a more thoughtfully active role of the audience. Many French movies engage the audience in an event for the purpose of transforming social consciousness, whereas Hollywood would present the audience with a situation for the sake of the experience itself. French director Francois Truffaut categorized this trend, saying, "American cinema is a cinema of situations, French cinema a cinema of characters."
While much more may be happening physically in international box-office hits like Armageddon and Deep Impact, such as cities exploding or potential disasters being averted, a successful French movie, like director Benoit Jacquot's most recent release School of Flesh, requires the audience to do a lot more thinking. In exploring the sexual relationship that develops between a successful older woman and a young street ruffian, Jacquot occupies entire scenes with extreme close-ups of the main characters, veteran Isabelle Huppert and newcomer Vincent Martinez, in an effort to show their psychological grapplings - scenes that would end up on the cutting room floor in Hollywood.
Armageddon and Deep Impact spell out situations for the audience, so that by the end of the film all loose ends are tied up, and the viewer has been told what to think of the film. At the end of School of Flesh, however, the audience may not feel like anything tangible has happened during the movie, but there is a noticeable shift of consciousness.
Courtois argues for the value of French cinema, saying, "If you see a film and you forget it as if you had eaten a 'Big Mac,' what's the point of it? You consume it and you throw it away." The differences in perception of film can be traced back to the roots of French cinema as an extension of literature, compared to American cinema as an economic industry. Viewed as such, both systems are successful and not necessarily mutually exclusive.
A movie like Men In Black, full of big names, shallow characters and blessed with a large budget ($90 million) could never be made in France, due partly to lack of funding. Upon its release in 1997, however, it was the second-highest grossing film in the French box office; The Fifth Element (a French-financed, American-made blockbuster) was the first. The neck-and-neck competition between Hollywood and the French industry that has ensued will ultimately play the decisive role in the renaissance of French cinema. As the younger generation in France continues to buy into American films like Men in Black, French films come closer and closer to resembling their American counterparts.
What does this mean for the future of French cinema - are the stereotypically intellectual, psychological films going to continue to be produced in France? Courtois fears the worst. In the end, it may be the avance sur recettes that will be responsible for the survival of the artistic French films, as the system is reduced to simple economic competition. "As long as the money will come freely to allow French films to be done," Courtois says, "France will resist. If the funding stops and France has to rely on private sources, it's over. The producers want to make money."
