The Roman Catholic Church, Cinema and the “Culture of Dialogue”

This chapter discusses the rise and fall of Catholic sovereignty over Hollywood cinema follows a neat three-act scenario: struggle for control, imperial hegemony and gradual collapse. It explains the operation of pressure-group politics, the progress of an outcast minority into the center stage of American life and the shifting norms of American culture in the twentieth century. Nothing like the Catholic-Hollywood symbiosis operated in any other of the lively arts, not in theater, not in radio, not in television. Only American cinema kept faith with Catholic theology. Like the rest of America, the motion picture industry was battered by the Great Depression. For the first time in Hollywood history, box office revenue was in free fall. To lure audiences back into theaters, producers threw heretofore unthinkable fare into the market place, lascivious sexuality, sadistic violence and perverse melodrama. The spiritual-cinematic journey from the Production Code to The Da Vinci Code tracks the summit of Catholic influence in Hollywood.