ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways in which foreign sound films were distributed, shown and received in Prague between 1929 and 1939. 1 Comparing the popularity of Czechoslovak, American and German productions on the local market, it presents a list of each year’s top-ten hits, and draws conclusions about the short- and longer-term tendencies of local cinemagoing preferences. The chapter asks why the English language and American culture were considered to be disturbing elements by local audiences. What made German films not only more popular than American ones, but also more popular than German versions of American films? Was it the German language, which was more comprehensible to the local public than English, or the archetypes of German-Austrian popular culture represented in these films? How can we explain the extreme but short-term popularity of American talkies in the first year that they were shown in Prague, and their sharp decline in popularity in the following years? What kind of American films continued to be hits after 1930?
