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After World War II, the recovering Europe is still an "old aristocratic" atmosphere, and in this old European image, the earliest change occurred in the film, which was the golden age of cinema. In Britain, moviegoers quickly peaked after the war, with 1946 selling a total of 1.7 billion tickets in 5,000 theatres, with about 1/3 of people visiting cinemas every week. By 1950, despite the decline in audiences, British adults still watched the film an average of 28 times a year, nearly 40% higher than the year before the war.
While the number of viewers in the UK was declining, the audience on the European continent was on the rise. In the early 1950s, 1,000 new cinemas opened in France, and the number in West Germany was about the same; there were 3,000 new cinemas in Italy, and by 1956 there were about 10,000 cinemas in the country. In 1955, Italy had the largest audience of films, with about 800 million people.
French audiences were the most numerous in the late 1940s, but they were no match for those in britain or Italy. The situation in West Germany was similar to that in France, and it was not until 1959 that the number of west German spectators peaked, but the absolute number was still large. The same is true in Spain, where adult audiences saw the highest average annual movies in Europe in 1947.
The postwar film boom was a release of the need to be imprisoned during the war, and americans took the opportunity to fill the shortage of wartime films. In 1946, 87 percent of Italian cinemas were foreign films; from 1939 to the end of the 50s, of the roughly 5,000 films released in Madrid, 4,200 were foreign films, mostly American films.
In 1947, the French film industry produced 40 films, compared with 340 films imported from the United States. American films were not only overwhelmingly superior in numbers, but also popular with the public: one of berlin's most commercially successful films after the war was Chaplin's Gold Rush, and the other was The Maltese Eagle (shot in 1941 and released after the war).
American films entered Europe mainly for economic reasons, and American films actually made a lot of money in Europe. But after World War II, Europe became reluctant to open its markets to American products: first of all, the local film industry needed government support and could not be harmed by the "dumping" of American films; and the dollar was really scarce and could not be spent too much on imported films. Squeezed by the shrinking domestic box office and rising production costs, the threshold for entering the European market has become higher, and the days of American films have been very difficult. So the Americans can only play with political means as always.
As early as 1927, the British Parliament passed a law on quotas, requiring that by 1936 20% of the films screened in Britain must be domestic. After World War II, the British government wanted to increase the ratio to 30 percent in 1948, and France, Italy, and Spain pursued the same or even higher goals. But Hollywood's constant lobbying and urging the U.S. State Department to put pressure on Europe has made "American films into Europe" a package clause in bilateral trade and loan agreements between the United States and Europe.
According to the May 1946 signing of the "Bloom. The French government reluctantly reduced the annual quota of 55% of domestic films to 30%, and as a result, a year later, the production of domestic films in France was halved. The British Labour government also failed to resist the "invasion" of American films.
Only Spain blocked the import of American films, mainly because Franco was a man who was more stunned and could do whatever he wanted, and he did not expect that banning American films would cause political disputes. But even so, American films in Spain still far exceed domestic films.
Americans are chicken thieves: after 1949, when European countries subsidized domestic producers by taxing the theater box office, Americans directly invested in overseas filmmakers, earning both box office and subsidies, and European countries immediately found themselves suffering losses. By 1952, 40 percent of the U.S. film industry's revenue came from overseas markets, led by Europe. Six years later, that percentage rose to 50 percent.
After American films dominated the European market, The European films of this period changed their taste, and Europeans seemed to prefer to understand their country through movies, rather than their own experiences.
It is worth mentioning that in 1942, there was a "Lady Minifer", which was a pure Hollywood film, which told a typical British story, showing the perseverance and perseverance of the British, and the background was selected during the symbolic Dunkirk evacuation period, which portrayed the character to the fullest. However, when the British watch movies, they don't pay attention to the producers, they just think: This is us British!
Although the business is very cunning, the quality of American films is really high. They are beautifully made and are often screened in canvas, which is unmatched by resource-poor European producers. But they didn't continue the absurd comedy or romance style of the 30s, in fact, in the late 40s, the most popular among Europeans were some "noir films". They may be a detective story or a social event, but the tone and texture are darker and duller than the American films of decades ago.
During this period, Europeans themselves always liked to make films about romance and escape, such as the Black Forest in fairy tales or the Alpenpes, or light comedies like British films, such as "Anecdotes of Piccadilly Street", "Spring on Garden Street" and "London May Market".
Produced by Herbert Wilcox, the films are set in the trendy West End of London, with Anna Nigel, Michael Waldin and Rex Harrison playing the bright teenage girls who are new to the social world and the eccentric aristocrats. The memorable Italian and French films are all makeup funky stories, and the peasants and aristocrats in the play are often replaced by mechanics or merchants.
The most popular European film of the 10 years after the war is still about the war. In the short period after the liberation of Europe, many films with the theme of "resistance movements" were made: "Executioner", "Doomsday Trial" and "Railway War", etc., all of which drew a clear mark among heroic resisters, cowardly collaborators, and brutal Germans.
There are also parts of the film set in the ruins of Berlin: Roberto Rossellini's "German Zero"; "Diplomatic Affairs" directed by Austrian-American immigrant Billy Wald; Wolfgang Staud's "The Murderer is Among Us", the first German film to morally condemn Nazi atrocities, but the word "Jewish" is not mentioned throughout the film.
In this genre, Roberto Rossellini directed three films: Rome, the Undefended City, The Flames of War, and German Zero; Vittorio de Sica directed Shoe Shine Boy, The Bicycle Thief and D. Emberto. Rossellini was a representative of the neorealist film trend of 1945-1952, and he pushed Italian cinema to the forefront of the world.
Contemporaries in England also had one or two well-known films of the same genre, such as Passport to Pimlico. These works of reflection on war represent the mainstream of postwar cinema. But even Britain's best work is no match for the exploration of the dark side of human nature in Italy's outstanding films.
The "facts" presented in these films are processed, a "mythical" world presented after the memory of war has been filtered. The workers, the beautiful countryside, and the young children represent something good, undefiled, real, beautiful even if poor or in ruins. Class, wealth, greed, collaboration with the enemy, extravagance and extravagance are undoubtedly false values.
Most of these films are made in the form of documentaries, most of which do not appear Americans, a European Europe who lives in a ruined city that is being restored. Like the concept of "post-war," these films disappeared after 1952. However, neorealism was preserved in Spanish life in some peculiar way, with Lewis García Bellanga directing Welcome, Mr. Marshall in 1953, and Juan Antonio Balden filming Death of the Rider in 1953.
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