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130 6 • BLACKLISTED DIRECTORS, ART CINEMA, AND THE CAPRICES OF FILM CRITICISM Emerging in tandem with the international co-production and “cosmopolitan” film was another filmmaking trend that played a significant role in shifting attention away from Hollywood. The rise of the European art film— both as a mode of film practice and an institution, to combine David Bordwell’s and Steve Neale’s well-known definitions—presented a distinct challenge to Hollywood filmmaking, as well as to the careers of some of the blacklisted in Europe.1 While also intended for an international audience, the European art film employed rather different formal and economic strategies from the AngloAmerican or Euro-American co-productions, or the Hollywood “runaway” productions previously discussed. Whether through aesthetic qualities such as fractured narratives or emphasis on personal expression or through its dependence on funding systems designed to support the production specifically of “quality” films, the European art film functioned as an oppositional cinema to commercial production—whether Hollywood or European—and as a bulwark for Europe’s national cinemas. A number of concurrent developments in Europe and America contributed tothisnewemphasisoncinemaasart.InFrance,theciné-clubmovement,which dated from the 1920s, experienced a dramatic revival in the postwar period, with numbers increasing from one in 1944 to more than 250 by 1960.2 In 1955, the creation of the Association of French Art Cinemas (Association française des cinémas d’arts et d’essai), which granted formal recognition to designated theaters along with government support in the form of a tax break, reflected the interest in non-mainstream cinema that the ciné-club movement had helped foster. The critical discourse and debates promoted in new journals such as L’Age du Blacklisted Directors, Art Cinema, and the Caprices of Film Criticism 131 cinéma (1951–1952,) Cahiers du cinéma (1951-present), Ciné-Club (1947–1954) and its replacement, Cinéma 55 (1954–present), Positif (1952–present), and Raccords (1950–1952) similarly played a significant role in shifting the public perception of cinema away from that of an entertaining diversion to a fundamental part of cultural life.3 In the United Kingdom, the postwar period also saw the arrival of a number of influential new film journals—Sequence (1947–1952), Motion (1961–1963), and Movie (1962–2000)—that emphasized aesthetics and attempted to reinvent film criticism by “finding ways of writing about cinema that escapes the limits of the reviewer’s craft,” in the words of V. F. Perkins, one of Movie’s co-founders.4 The career paths of the blacklisted exiles were profoundly affected by these changes taking place within European film criticism. In both Britain and France, the committed humanism of an earlier generation of critics made way for a new apolitical emphasis on the director as auteur. For many of the exiles, whose intellectual and artistic orientation remained profoundly influenced by their progressive politics, these developments put them firmly at the margins of the zeitgeist. Unlike the critics associated with communist publications such as L’Écran fran- çais and L’Humanité who admired the Hollywood exiles as fellow “hommes de gauche” and evaluated their films through the lens of their political experiences, the Cahiers group had little patience for the mystique of the blacklist.5 Likewise, in Britain, the young critics of Movie magazine were less interested in Joseph Losey’s radical background than in the passion for stylization that prompted them to laud him as the only “British” director who could be recognized as an auteur. The fact that he was actually American only fueled their conviction that British cinema was just as “dead” as it had been before the so-called “New Wave” began in the late 1950s.6 At a time when British cinema was experiencing a dramatic renaissance thanks largely to the influx of American financing, the success of exiles like Losey further complicated the charged debates surrounding national cinema and identity. The new cachet of European art cinema in the United States also had a significant effect on the careers of the blacklisted exiles. A number of historical and demographic factors contributed to the American movie-going public’s growing interest in looking beyond Hollywood. The experience of World War II had created a demand for films that portrayed individual and social problems with greater realism. Likewise, the G.I. Bill led to a population of college-educated veterans whose experience living abroad contributed to an interest in more cosmopolitan , sophisticated films. As the 1950s progressed and...

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