Over the decades one hears the voice of actress Anouk Aimee in the celebrated French film classic A Man and a Woman ask plaintively, "Are there any new American films to see?" And the sentiment is as true today, in France and much of the world, as it was a quarter century ago. In an age when the United States has a huge trade deficit, when nations once its virtual wards are besting it in exports (often in products once U.S. specialties), American world hegemony in entertainment "software"--in films, television series and popular music--is greater than it has even been.
A glance at recent issues of Variety, the U.S. entertainment industry's trade journal, gives the general picture. A scattered sampling shows American films dominating the market in London, Paris, Rome, West Berlin, Amsterdam, Zurich, and all Scandinavian capitals. In Paris last summer nine out of the top ten moves were American. Other parts of the world? In Tokyo the same summer, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade led the pack, and seven out of the top nine films were American. In Sydney, Lethal Weapon 2 (an American film with an Australian star, Mel Gibson) went straight to the front, followed closely by six other U.S. movies. In Hong Kong recently, the latest edition of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo series battled it out with a Cantonese comedy. And in the Philippines, Ghostbusters II broke all records, Filipinos giving the film a triumphant opening in Manila even during a typhoon.
American Invasion
A report to the European Parliament a few years back disclosed that the United States holds 70 percent of the domestic movie market in Greece, 80 percent in the Netherlands, and over 90 percent in both Britain and West Germany. Official figures from Spain's Ministry of Culture showed in 1988 a massive American invasion: a phalanx of fourteen of the country's fifteen most successful films. France can plausibly lay claim to being the world's second most influential film power after the United States since, in addition to holding its own better than other Western countries at home, it is the most successful in penetrating the American market. In 1988, among foreign films distributed in the United States, France plainly held the lion's share.
The main oddity--which usually comes as a shock to foreign-film lovers in America--is that it is such a tiny lion. In the United States in 1988 not a single one of the top 120 films was foreign made. Every January, Variety lists in order of revenues all films released in America during the preceding year with reported rentals of at least $1 million-these days in the movie business, a very modest sum. Of the 169 films that made the list in 1988, exactly seven were foreign: three French, and one apiece for Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and Britain, all clustered near the bottom. The seven foreign films altogether accounted for seven-tenths of one percent of the total listed market. But if Americans hardly seem to think about foreign countries at all, judging by the movies they see--and television dramas and most other popular arts bear witness to the same phenomenon--foreigners think about America a lot. Why?
Devil's Workshop
The answer often encountered abroad is that American films are simply "better"--a reply that soon reveals itself opaque. Why better? In this high-tech world, the technology involved in the making of
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