ABSTRACT
Western filmmakers, critics, and audiences, in short, seemed fundamentally conflicted about colonialism in the 1950s. As in the 1950s, attempts to update the colonial adventure genre by inserting material critical of Western behavior sometimes produced confusing results: trying to envision an egalitarian colonialism ultimately proved quixotic. In the early 1970s, the second cycle of French films on Algeria also attested to changing attitudes toward colonialism. The claim that public opinion in the United States, Britain, and France turned against colonialism in the late 1960s rests on a conception of public opinion that emphasizes those opinions that prevailed in the public sphere rather than the equally weighted private opinions of all individuals. One such change involved moving from criticizing rival powers’ colonialism toward opposing one’s own country’s actions. In the long-term discrediting of colonialism, the films of the late 1960s and early 1970s both reflected and helped propel that remarkable historical change.
