Introduction

Part of the existing map of cinema is coloured in quite clearly: there is America, which is Hollywood, which is popular entertainment, and there is Europe, which is art. Critics and historians of film have started to put new shades into the picture: the USA has, since the First World War, been massively part of European cinema, above all for audiences; aesthetic developments in European film have time and again found their way into Hollywood production (e.g. expressionism, the horror movie and film noir, the new waves and 'New Hollywood Cinema'). Yet one aspect of the equation has remained stubbornly unacknowledged: popular entertainment cinema made by Europeans for Europeans. This book hopes to inaugurate the business of shading in the map of European cinema with the colours of indigenous popular film.