ABSTRACT
The concept of national cinema has been central in several film historical texts and debates in recent years. As a departure point for the discussion of film in national terms, we find the assumption that a country’s film history can be considered from certain stylistic or thematic parameters, related to the country’s culture and the general background of the films which unite the country’s production, to be a more or less homogeneous phenomenon. As a typical example one could mention France, where among other features poetic realism is often mentioned as a specifically national tendency in French production, or Germany, where expressionism or the new German cinema play a similar part. These national film cultures have often functioned as a counterbalance to the hegemony of Hollywood. During some periods, as, for example, in the new German cinema, the ambition to create a domestic film has been the expressed intention of the film-makers. In films by a Fassbinder or a Wenders there is clearly inscribed a critique of the Hollywood cinema, yet at the same time these films relate to Hollywood on several levels. They constitute an antithesis, a formulation of an individual alternative, and they have been interpreted as such by the audience. At other times it seems more reasonable to regard the national element largely as a reflection of the audience, as something that arises in the film’s reception.
