EUROPEAN FILM INDUSTRIES

By Anne Jackel. London: British Film Institute, 2003. 212 pp. $65.00 cloth. $24.95 paper.

In March 2003, Europe's national film councils demanded that the European Union revise its criteria for subsidizing production to include commercial as well as cultural projects. They criticized the EU for restricting the amount of support allotted per film to a predetermined percentage of its budget, deeming the cap unsuitable in today's unpredictable market. They sought a more ambitious outlook that considered the unique industrial conditions affecting each member state. European Film Industries more or less co-opts their approach.

Although concentrating on the production, distribution, and exhibition of feature films throughout the continent, Jackel respects the subtle variations between nations. Rather than limit her study to the West like most previous scholarship, she intuitively discusses Central and Eastern Europe and anticipates the difficulties of incorporating the Czech Republic (which attracts more runaway production than Canada) and Poland (which is recovering from a recession) into pre-existing EU policies. For Jackel, even if these pan-European regulations and support systems internationalize the film industry and justify a continent-wide analysis, "there is a long tradition of state support, and national contexts still define industry practice" (1).

Jackel may be too optimistic about state protection of cinema's social influence. She herself writes that political censors in the Soviet Bloc tolerated and even funded oppositional filmmakers as long as they turned a profit. However, European Film Industries provocatively defines "cultural priorities" not simply as those fulfilled by textual content--such as the foregrounding of national concerns or the employment of homegrown talent--but also by markedly European modes of filmmaking. Although these traditions and practices differ among regions, Jackel describes them broadly as promoting art over profit, directors over producers, production over distribution and exhibition, and government subsidy over entreprencurialism. They lend European cinema artistic distinction but not industrial security. Hollywood blockbusters bury European films in their own territories, self-indulgent directors alienate audiences at home and abroad, U.S. companies control Europe's distribution and exhibition sectors, and government funding may allow industry professionals to ignore these problems while making films that rarely find an audience. As evidenced by the film councils' adoption of a more aggressive and business-conscious strategy, it seems the best way to safeguard indigenous cinema from a wholesale Hollywood takeover is to abandon the cultural approach to filmmaking.

This is where European Film Industries makes its impact. Whereas earlier book-length studies regard the industrial situation in Europe as either an illness to be cured (such as Angus Finney's The State of European Cinema) or a puzzle to be solved (such as Martin Dale's The Movie Game), Jackel's text exhibits a more nuanced assessment. She offers a thorough examination of how European film industries operate collectively and individually. Her first chapter--"Historical Developments in Europe's Film Industries"--establishes, the "pervasive dominance" of Hollywood as the perennial cause for government intervention, pan-European initiatives, privately financed co-productions, and the widespread embrace of commerciality. Jackel gives concrete explanations as to why certain practices did or did not develop. She convincingly ascribes the Eastern Bloc's new profit-driven ethos to its overall conversion to a market economy, attributes government aversion toward distribution to the risks of controlling the sector's multi-territorial reach, and accredits the scarcity of pan-European distribution consortiums to the difficulty of finding one film that will benefit each company involved.

Chapter 2 focuses on the shifting practices and attitudes driving contemporary European filmmaking. Jackel outlines region-specific trends that finance indigenous production by leasing studio space and postproduction facilities to wealthier nations. She points out that the industries have begun to realize that these measures do not offer long-term security. They have also grown leery of similar attempts by France, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, and the U.K. to attract foreign capital through specializing in particular areas of filmmaking such as animation and special effects--the costs of maintaining the technology simply outweigh the profits. Lastly, Jackel sketches out changing opinions regarding the roles of directors and producers. Considering Run Lola Run's Tom Twyker as a prototype, she profiles new directors "who are prepared to give more importance to development and the pre-production phase than their predecessors. They are also at ease with the traditions of European auteur/art cinema and Hollywood entertainment values" (33). The new producer, writes Jackel, demonstrates the same sensibilities, sharper business skills, and performs an equally crucial role in the filmmaking process.

In her third and fourth chapters--"Production Financing and Co-production" and "European and pan-European Production Initiatives," respectively--Jackel discusses private financing, state funding, and European and Pan-European support mechanisms such as MEDIA and Eurimages. She shows how, even though investment levels vary across territories, the only means of securing Hollywood-style budgets is co-production. Unfortunately, the vast majority of profitable co-productions are English-language films, giving financiers and government funding bodies little incentive to protect cultural specificity. Jackel also maps out the ways in which continent-wide initiatives encourage nations to network, pool their resources and talent, mobilize capital, and improve the circulation of European films within the continent.

Jackel's final two chapters examine briefly the distribution and exhibition of film throughout Europe. Jackel describes the emergence of new European conglomerates formed by powerful companies from multiple nations. In most cases, these corporations have either collapsed (her example is Polygram) or neglected their obligation to distribute European films domestically--a significant oversight given that European films perform best in their home territories. Moreover, these larger companies have squeezed smaller distributors who handle indigenous films out of the European market. According to Jackel, "a two-tier system is emerging (global-commercial versus individual-cultural) as the gap widens between large and small players" (145).

To Jackel, the European industries are necessarily in a process of testing different strategies. Rather than criticize past failures or call for future action based on her own subjective opinions, Jackel provides a detailed overview of the contemporary industries so that it might become obvious to her readers what will work and what will not, what changes might be embraced, and what traditions might be let go.

From the information available in The European Film Industries, it is apparent that a director-led cinema can be reconciled with a producer-led film industry; their roles have grown more compatible, and many European directors have become successful producers (e.g., Lars von Trier, Pedro Almodovar, Nanni Moretti, and Nikita Mikhalkov). Their filmmaking activities aside, these figures further align artistic and commercial interests by being "the most marketable and profitable hooks for European films" (29). Jackel also demonstrates that networking among companies and facilities will potentially integrate the industries while respecting regional differences (unlike forming megamergers or ties with U.S. studios). Finally, her work indicates that state subsidy does not cultivate apathy among film professionals--on the contrary, the most efficient industries invariably receive the most government support.

This organized study suffers somewhat from uneven writing and paltry chapter conclusions; Jackel's impressive research and the book's breadth of information deserve better than quick summaries that do little more than combine sentences from each subchapter word for word. The case studies throughout the text are well-placed (serving more as "test cases" to coincide with Jackel's approach) and enlightening. The tables in the latter half of the book (which are borrowed from other sources) are equally helpful--despite the erroneous inclusion of the 1999 Robin Williams vehicle Jakob the Liar in a listing of "Foreign-language films released in the United States" (101).