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13 octobre 2011

Hollywood émigrés

- Cultural Diversity Awareness - 

In Memoriam of all the foreign artists who brought their talent to Hollywood to give a major contribution to its success then and now.

During WW2 and in the post-WW2 era this was called the "brain drain" : facilitate the emigration of the most talented people from Europe to install them in America and kill two birds with one stone. One, it makes European countries less competitive, since they lose the best of their intelligentsia. Two, it makes the USA more competitive by adding this intellectual capital to the development of their economy. Just like the economy of the USA, the success and later worldwide hegemony of Hollywood benefited greatly of this positive emigration towards their shores. The great names in Hollywood, for a large part, be it producer, director, actor, cinematographer... come from Europe (Germany, France, UK, Eastern Europe...), and later from Asia (Hong Kong, Japan...), Canada or Mexico... Whether to move permanently there (like Hitchcock or Lubitsch), or to give a try at a single film (like Wong Kar-wai or Jean-Pierre Jeunet) they always credit that much more to the record books of Hollywood instead of their homeland. And this practice, although partially favored by the attraction of big budgets, the star system and fame, was not an all-out manipulative campaign. The objective appeal of the Hollywood market is undeniable, at least as far as Entertainment is concerned. Artists do go there willingly, for the "American dream", in the hope of improving their access to celebrity and wealth. Hollywood doesn't discriminate, and treats foreigners as well as the homegrown talents, as long as they make money... thereafter they are dumped and forgotten as fast as they got in. This is the rule of the game. Only then do they realise they might have sold their soul too quickly.
Unfortunately this cultural "exchange" is a one-way highway. Hollywood doesn't give back the help they received from foreign industries... As soon as these emigrés work for Hollywood, they are considered "American" and they make "American" films, forgetting all about their heritage and their identity. Oblivious of what they owe to foreign countries, and the development of new artists for the next generation, ungrateful Hollywood shows no mercy on the global market, crushing domestic cinema in these very friendly countries by imposing the exclusive domination of their blockbusters on foreign screens, by fighting off the quotas that help the survival of a local industry. Hollywood only cares about making more money, they don't care about cultural diversity in the world, the kind nursing of struggling national industries outside of the USA, or even the welcoming of foreign films on American screens! 
This is sad, and disrespectful, especially when Hollywood makes way more than any other film industry in the world and is the last industry that suffers from "unfair competition"!
You would think that an ex-nihilo nation entirely built on immigration, on the melting-pot of foreign culture, on cosmopolitan and multi-cultural traditions would show, as a people, more interest, curiosity, appetite for foreign cinema, foreign stars, foreign artists... it's the contrary. Americans, the multicultural Americans watch less foreign films than any other countries in the world! If they don't do it out of respect for world culture, I wish they would at least show a better representation of their own multi-culturalism in Hollywood films (which are all made for WASPs).
I think this should change and quickly! At least to reach the level of cultural diversity usual in the industrialised countries of the Western World.
When will America grow out of a business intensive industry and make some room (a decent minor share) for foreign culture?

Melting Pot (2002/Ad Council/USA) 1'

Some examples of the foreign contribution to the Hollywood "tradition de qualité" (only focusing on filmmakers):

EUROPE
  • AUSTRIA : Edgar G. Ulmer, Karl Freund, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Strenberg, Max Steiner, Max Reinhardt...
  • BELGIUM : Jacques Feyder, Chantal Akerman, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Alain Berliner...
  • former CZECHOZLOVAKIA : Milos Forman, Gustav Machaty, Ivan Passer...
  • DENMARK : Benjamin Christensen, Nicolas Winding Refn, Susanne Bier, Lone Scherfig, Niel Arden Oplev ...
  • FRANCE : André Deed, Alice Guy, Emile Chautard, Maurice Tourneur, George Archainbaud, Max Linder, Léonce Perret, Robert Florey, Jean Renoir, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Alexandre Aja, Barbet Schroeder, Bertrand Tavernier, Christopher Gans, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Demy, Jacques Deray, Max Ophüls, Maurice Tourneur, Jacques Tourneur, Julie Delpy, Julien Duvivier, Louis Malle, Matthieu Kassovitz, Michel Gondry, René Clair, René Clément, George Sluizer, Luc Besson, Xavier Gens, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Olivier Megaton, Yann Samuell, Louis Gasnier, Albert Capellani, Georges Fitzmauritce...
  • GEORGIA : Ruben Mamoulian...
  • GERMANY : Douglas Sirk, Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau, Fassbinder, G.W. Pabst, John Brahm, Max Ophüls, Paul Leni, Robert Siodmak, William Dieterle, William Wyler, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Wolfgang Petersen, Roland Emmerich, Christian Alvart, Curtis Bernhardt, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Conrad Viedt, Pola Negri, Arthur Robinson, Guad André Dupont...
  • GREECE : Costa-Gavras, M. Cacoyannis...
  • HUNGARY : Michael Curtiz, Laslo Benedek, Alexander Korda, Andrew Marton, John Auer, André de Toth, Charles Vidor, Pál Fejös...
  • ICELAND : Baltasar Kormakur...
  • IRELAND : Rex Ingram, Herbert Brenon, Sidney Olcott, Neil Jordan, Kirsten Sheridan...
  • ITALY : Frank Capra, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergio Leone, Vittorio de Sica, Lina Wertmüller...
  • LITHUANIA : Jonas Mekas...
  • NETHERLANDS : Paul Verhoeven, Theo van de Sande...
  • POLAND : Roman Polanski, Agnieszka Holland, Max Nosseck, Rudolph Maté...
  • RUSSIA : Anatole Litvak, Sergei Eisenstein, Lewis Milestone, Andrei Konchalovsky, Timur Bekmambetov...
  • SPAIN : Luis Buñuel, Nacho Vigalondo...
  • SWEDEN : Jan Troell, Mauritz Stiller, Viktor Sjöström, Lasse Hallström...
  • UK : James Whale, Stan Laurel, Charles Chaplin, Charles Laughton, Edmund Goulding, Ken Annakin, John Schlesinger, Tony Richardson, Alexander Mackendrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Nolan, John Boorman, Percy Aldon, Stephen Frears, Danny Boyle, Matthew Vaughn, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Roland Joffé, Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Apted...
ASIA
  • HONG KONG : Bruce Lee, Chen Kaige, John Woo, Ringo Lam, Jacky Chan, Tsui Hark, Wayne Wang, Wong Kar-wai...
  • INDIA : Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, M. Night Shyamalan...
  • JAPAN : Nagisa Oshima, Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Shimizu, Hideo Nakata, Takeshi Kitano, Ryuhei Kitamura...
  • KOREA : Jennifer Yuh, Dennis Lee, Park Chan-wook, Kim Ji-woon, Ahn Byeong-ki, Bong Joon-ho...
  • TAIWAN : Ang Lee...
  • THE PHILIPPINES : Lav Diaz...
AMERICA
  • ARGENTINA : Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, Hugo Fregonese... 
  • BRAZIL : Walter Salles, Fernando Meirelles...
  • CANADA :  Mack Sennett, Sidney J. Furie, Norman Jewison, Jason Reitman, Paul Haggis, James Cameron,  David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, Jean-Marc Vallée...
  • CHILE : Reuben Gonzalez, Alejandro Amenábar...
  • COLOMBIA : Rodrigo Garcia...
  • MEXICO : Emilio Fernández, Luis Mandoki, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu...
OCEANIA
  • AUSTRALIA : Bill Bennett, John Farrow, Stephen Elliott, Fred Schepisi, Jocelyn Moorhouse, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, George Miller, Richard Franklin, Jane Campione, Baz Luhrmann, Simon Wincer, Paul J. Hogan, Peter Weir, Philip Noyce, John Hillcoat...
  • NEW ZEALAND : Roger Donaldson, Peter Jackson, Andrew Dominik, Jane Campion...

MIDDLE EAST
  • ARMENIA : Sylvette Artinian, Aram Avakian, Tina Bastajian, Nigol Bezjian, Roxanne Bezjian, Theodore Bogosian, Varktes Cholakian, J. Michael Hagopian, Ara Madzounian, Rouben Mamoulian, Bill Omanesian, Richard Sarafian, William Saroyan, Setrag Vartian...

note: more examples welcome

* * *

Let's put this in regard to the amount of foreign films watched by the American audience :


To Steal talents abroad to improve the quality of Hollywood output : HELL YES!
To screen, and buy tickets in theatres on American soil to support foreign films : FORGET IT!!!

Nothing but greed and cultural blindness could explain this graph...



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7 commentaires:

  1. Emmanuel10/20/2011 5:35 AM

    my question is if Hollywood movies are counted as foreign in the other nations in the graph. i.e. are australian people seeing hollywood films? yes. In the graph, are these Hollywood productions counted as foreign? that's my question.

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  2. HarryTuttle10/20/2011 12:40 PM

    Yes, of course.
    The point is to show how much non-domestic culture these countries are willing to watch or not. Australia doesn't even make 40 films a year, that's less than 1 new release each week. The Australian exhibition is dependent on foreign production (80% of which come from Hollywood). American cinema is still considered foreign culture in Australia, it counts as opening to world cultural diversity (a culture and a cinematographic art different from your own), even if it's the "default commercial culture" everywhere.

    See detail on this page (2nd graph down)
    There are big film industries (like India, USA, Japan, China...) that need a certain market share to screen their domestic production and there are small film industries (like Australia) where Hollywood can easily fill the void.
    But as you see on the linked graph, nations producing more films than the USA don't lock out such a dominant share of viewership for their own domestic exhibition...

    Australia being on top doesn't mean it's the "best". It's a combination of protecting local culture, resisting to the Hollywood steamroller appeal and inviting foreign films.

    These stats don't account either for the quality of cinema viewed by the audience. It's not about "blockbuster" v. "artfilm".

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  3. HarryTuttle10/27/2011 10:47 AM

    Hugo Fregonese, un Argentin à Hollywood, Olivier Père (27 Oct 2011)

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  4. HarryTuttle11/12/2011 12:26 AM

    "Capino’s focus is on the ambivalent, ambiguous, love-hate, largely one-sided relationship between the Philippines and the United States, and how this affects Filipino and Filipino-American filmmaking. Note the crucial qualifier in that description: Capino doesn’t spend too much time with Filipino influence on American filmmaking, which at most consists of Gerardo De Leon and Eddie Romero’s minor impact on the American drive-in scene with their Blood Island movies (I’ve heard of a TV movie based on one of Lino Brocka’s finest works, Insiang (1976), and set in a trailer park, but that’s it—mostly rumors). The Hollywood/Quezonwood relationship is almost all one way, though in accepting that relationship and putting it to use we don’t always assume the role of victim, the oppressed developing country, living off the detritus of the developed—an observation Capino makes at one point."
    Dream Factories of a Former Colony: American Fantasies, Philippine Cinema (Noel Vera; Cineaste; Fall 2011)

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  5. HarryTuttle1/20/2012 2:35 PM

    "There are no Americans. America is full of foreigners"
    Alfred Hitchcock; quoted by Truffaut; 1967

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  6. HarryTuttle1/20/2012 2:48 PM

    "We are trying to lessen sales resistance in those countries that want to build up their own industries. We are trying to do that by internationalizing this art, by drawing on the old countries for the best talent that they possess in the way of artists, directors, and technicians and bringing these people over to our country, by drawing on their literary talents, taking their choicest stories and producing them in our own way."
    Anonymous Hollywood executive; in "Distributing the Product"; Sidney R. Kent; 1927

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  7. HarryTuttle2/26/2012 9:55 AM

    "It’s easy to argue that most of the greatest filmmakers in the history of movies can’t be reduced to single nationalities, and that an uncommon number of them worked as expatriates. [..]
    Speaking as someone who lived for almost eight years as an American expatriate in Paris and London, I’d argue that my appreciation of American movies — and of America more generally — was broadened and deepened as much by what I saw and read in those two cities as what I encountered back home. This suggests that becoming an expatriate can sometimes be a single step in a much longer process of repatriation. [..]"
    Expatriate Filmmaking, For Better and For Worse (Jonathan Rosenbaum; Stop Smiling, issue 36, 2008)

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