Towards a Comparative Economic History of Cinema, 1930–1970

Cinema is a way of life during the period covered by this book in large parts of the world. Central to it is the transaction between an exhibitor and a customer and the mechanism whereby a stock of films-as-commodities flowed among a set of cinemas through time and place. The flow was calculated and deliberate, making popular movies much less scarce than unpopular ones. Economic rationality is apparent: exhibitors and distributors in capitalist economies maximised their returns by adjusting supply to reflect audience preferences once revealed. Each transaction generated filmgoing data, from which patterns emerged, sometimes challenging accepted wisdom concerning the popularity of films or how they were circulated. The book aims to show what can be achieved by bringing simple empirical methods to bear on the history of cinema. It also seeks to encourage scholars to develop studies of their own, allowing audiences to speak for themselves through the choices they made—a method built upon microfoundations.

Box office is a measure of film popularity—the films people choose from an array made available for public consumption. While producer risk is a well-documented concept, commonly encapsulated in the so-called ‘nobody knows’ principle, consumer risk is less well-understood. Both are discussed. The POPSTAT method by which box office is estimated from programming data in the absence of archive evidence is also covered in this chapter. Its derivative RelPOP is used to make a comparative analysis of film popularity. Attention is also given to the International Orientation Index developed by Peter Miskell to explain the relative attractiveness of Hollywood movies in foreign markets. In addition, the importance of trade journals as a source of information and data and microeconomic concepts central to the investigation of industry behaviour are explained.

From their pursuit of the Motion Picture Industry, the Department of Justice had a poor concept of the economics peculiar to the film industry outlined in the previous chapter. They failed to appreciate that scheduling a film’s distribution (how many screens? how much time?) necessarily occurs before its popularity is known, requiring that the distribution and exhibition relationship must necessarily exhibit substantial post-contractual flexibility if the market works efficiently. Philadelphia was an exhibition stronghold for Warner Bros. In our investigation of the programming of its cinemas in the mid-1930s and the box-office returns that accrued, we find no evidence of monopoly practice in the first run. That is to say that as exhibitors Warner Bros. screened major attractions produced by other studios as a matter of standard practice. As a rule, films were screened for as long as a threshold number of customers bought tickets.

For 1934, film popularity (POPSTAT) statistics of three small English cities, Bolton, Brighton, and Portsmouth, are derived from daily local newspapers and used to investigate audience preferences. Box-office information for the Regent cinema, Portsmouth, is used to corroborate the POPSTAT Index values of those films screened during the year. A high correlation between the two is found. Comparisons between the POPSTAT charts are conducted using the RelPOP method, and differences in preferences are found for some British films. At the same time, many Hollywood productions are similarly popular across the three cities.

Leif Furhammar was an esteemed professor of Film Studies at the University of Stockholm. In 1990 he produced a report on filmgoing in Stockholm during the 1930s. The report is little known to film scholars, especially outside of Sweden. Furhammar takes a novel approach to investigate what films people watched by counting film programmes listed in a daily city newspaper. Using similar methods to POPSTAT, Furhammar produces charts of the annual best-attended films in Stockholm for the decade, including all Swedish movies released. His work introduced an entirely new type of evidence concerning film popularity. This chapter discusses his methods, replicates his results (where data permits), and analyses his findings.

This chapter analyses the relationship between 17 Dutch films produced in 1934 and 1935 and their popularity with Dutch filmgoers. Starting from the concept of cultural nearness and appropriation, I have examined recurring character types, themes, and plot developments, arguing that those can reveal preferences for certain morals and values and thus shed light on aspects of Dutch culture. Audiences better appreciate films in which working-class characters take control over their future. This is especially the case in the movies starring Fientje de la Mar, in which a positive image of a successful, independent, and nonconformist woman is presented. In contrast, a popular male character was clumsy, not too bright, and not very handsome: a goodhearted working-class boy, like those characters played by Johan Kaart. Most plotlines revolve around newly formed romantic couples or married couples. Jealousy is the main obstacle they must overcome. Invariably, the emotional state is resolved by showing that partners were unjustly jealous. Coming from the wrong social class is a recurring obstacle as well. Crossing the borders between social classes to marry is acceptable when the transgressor is open, honest, and not pursuing financial gain. In most films, multiple plot lines show different couples. Movies that depict traditional relations are juxtaposed by highly popular films in which the main female protagonist refuses to commit herself to one man. A considerable amount of humour is created at the expense of bossy women and superior men from upper-class backgrounds. Such characters always come off badly, making it clear that their behaviour is not appreciated.

The conventional wisdom espoused by cultural nationalists in Australia is that Hollywood films dominated Australian screens by virtue of a powerful, inflexible block-booking system. Using a dataset of screenings from Adelaide, a second-tier capital city, this article seeks to replace such totalising generalisations with a more complex view of the diverse relations that constituted exhibition in Australia. Different exhibitors and distributors had a widely divergent set of tactical business arrangements, which conditioned the way films moved through the various phases of their release. Our study centres on the 1942–1943 financial year, for which we have specific box-office figures, thereby allowing us to check the accuracy of POPSTAT estimates.

This chapter investigates filmgoing and distribution in urban Belgium during the German occupation (1940–1944). It is based on all films screened in Brussels, Antwerp and Liege between 1 January 1941 and 31 December 1943—each city representing contrasting cultural and linguistic traditions. The research finds a clear cultural divide between film screenings in Flanders and Wallonia. The differences between the POPSTAT top 20 lists of the three cities are remarkable, particularly between Brussels-Antwerp and Liege-Antwerp. While subject to many edicts, filmgoing remained an essential activity for the Belgian people, irrespective of where they lived. The longevity of films in circulation represents a difference between the pre-and post-war system of distribution, occasioned by supply shortages. Films were required to work harder.

This chapter investigates cinema types, film distribution patterns and consumption in five regional capitals in Italy in the mid-1950s. It aims to develop a framework of comparative analysis, extending previous research of filmgoing in Italy, comparing Rome with the cities of Milan and Turin in the North and Naples, and Bari in the South. Evidence of regional differences in film preferences is presented.

The chapter presents research findings on film popularity in Czechoslovakia during the period of late Stalinism. It also reflects upon methodological difficulties of using the POPSTAT Index in a central command economy. Nationally derived statistics set a context in which ideology and shortages were crucial features. These are supplemented by POPSTAT statistics for the city of Brno in 1952 based upon advertised film programmes. While national attendance figures corroborate these, they need to be carefully contextualised. This is because film programmes were required to meet ideological and commercial objectives.

From a combination of archive materials, official statistics and programming data, this chapter examines the Polish film market during the years of ‘High Stalinism’. We learn about the importance of cinema to Communist rule and the primacy of cultural links to the Soviet Union. For the authorities, filmgoing was an act of solidarity and ideological education. However, the shortage of new film releases in general and the small scale of the domestic film industry caused the authorities to import films from Western Europe, and these proved to be very popular with audiences. A POPSTAT analysis of Cracow and the proximate new industrial city of Nowa Huta shows familiar popularity, distribution and exhibition patterns. Some films popular with audiences are discussed.

This chapter focuses attention on the USA in the post-war decades. The period witnessed a dramatic decline in total cinema admissions and a shift in the composition and behaviour of audiences. These changes helped trigger a wider industrial upheaval which has been much discussed in academic literature. The chapter argues that an important feature of Hollywood’s response to these changes involved the production of films with a distinctively international character. As international markets became increasingly important for US filmmakers, a key challenge for the industry was the creation of hit films that could appeal to international and domestic audiences alike. By combining evidence from new and existing datasets, I show how internationally themed pictures became increasingly prominent at the US box-office as the period progressed.