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1 Antecedents Avibrant art film culture existed in the United States as early as the 1920s, an outgrowth of the Little Cinema Movement, a loose network of small theaters presenting the latest avant-garde and critically acclaimed films from Europe. The Little Cinema Movement was inspired by the Little Theater Movement, a similar network of noncommercial theaters presenting the new drama and stagecraft of Europe, and by the cine clubs of Europe showing avant-garde films. The little cinemas catered to the upper-class elite and to the intelligentsia, people who considered foreign films more artful and sophisticated than standard Hollywood fare.1 The Little Cinema Movement took off in 1926 when Symon Gould, the director of the International Film Arts Guild, acquired the Cameo Theater, a legitimate house located on 42nd Street, near Broadway, in Manhattan and transformed it into a repertory theater presenting a series of weeklong programs to a subscription audience. During the first season, the guild showed a mix of films from Germany, France, and the United States, among them Ernst Lubitsch’s Passion, starring Pola Negri, Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim. Also in 1926 Michael Mindlin, a former Broadway producer, transformed the Fifth Avenue Playhouse into a repertory theater , leading off with the German expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Mindlin went on to operate a string of art houses in the Greater New York area, as well as other cities, and created a film distribution arm to supply them. The movement received the support of prominent organizations that promoted the “Better Films” idea, in particular the National Board of Review of Films, the former New York City censorship body, which published thoughtful 25 26 Part One: Emergence  commentaries and reviews about the imports in its magazine. Other journals, such as Close up and Theatre Arts Magazine, also lent their support. By the end of the decade little cinemas could also be found in New Haven, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Rochester, Cleveland, Akron, Chicago, Los Angeles , Berkeley, and San Francisco. Unlike the ornate movie palaces that were being built in most downtown areas, the little cinemas provided an intimate viewing experience and cultivated an aura of “modernity and chicness” by serving coffee and cigarettes in the lounge, exhibiting paintings and sculpture, and distributing programs like the ones in legitimate theaters.2 It was a shortlived movement, however, a casualty of talkies. As bastions of the silent film, the little cinemas ran out of quality films during the conversion and the first talkies were unsuitable as replacements. The Depression also took its toll. After the conversion to sound, the number of foreign imports actually increased, but they played almost exclusively in ethnic theaters in immigrant neighborhoods. New York, with over thirty ethnic theaters, showed films in French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Chinese, Spanish , and Yiddish, to name but a few. Producers in the largest overseas markets— France and Germany in particular—would have preferred otherwise. Hollywood had dominated the world film market since the 1920s. To limit Hollywood’s incursion, foreign governments instituted import quotas and other protective measures to support their local film industries. However, few of their films returned their investments at home. In order to survive, foreign producers needed to export and wanted reciprocity in the lucrative American market. The majors would have none of it. During the silent era, the majors regularly distributed foreign films and exhibited them in their theaters; it was a simple and inexpensive matter to translate the intertitles of foreign films into English to make them intelligible to American audiences. After the advent of sound, the situation changed. Foreign films had to be dubbed into English—an expensive proposition—to tap the U.S. market. As the principal innovators of sound, the majors had gotten a head start by investing millions to construct sound stages, wire their theaters, and experiment with the new medium. Hollywood easily retained it dominance overseas. In the rush to compete, European producers had to scramble to make the conversion. The first foreign films to reach the United States were often criticized for their poor sound quality and for being “out of touch” with standard production practices. During the 1930s the majors preferred to handle their own pictures exclusively on their home turf. Moviegoing had become a national pastime, serviced by seventeen thousand theaters in cities, towns, and villages throughout the country. The Big Five—Loew’s Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Warner Bros...

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