| Popis: |
The book by film historian Ivan Klimeš, Cinema and the State in the Bohemian Countries 1895–1945, contains a comprehensive collection of thematically linked essays which together offer a step-by-step probe into the gamut of twists and turns accompanying the shaping of the relationship between the cinematic art and the state. That the developments in this field were indeed dramatic is documented by the fact that at the outset of the whole story, the state's attitude to the cinema was largely incredulous, manifested by the imposition of strict regulations on the film industry's develoment, while at its ending the story climaxed by the establishment of state monopoly. During the various stages of the period under survey, the Bohemian countries were successively part of four different state entities, with different geopolitical borders (five in fact to be precise, taking into account the borders of Czechoslovakia in the first few months after the liberation). For its part, Austria applied to filmmaking a licence system in force for all types of paid-for entertainment productions with the exception of theatre. Licences for the operation of cinema theatres were granted for a period of three years at the maximum, without provision on their automatic extension. Despite numerous attempts at changing this dated system, it remained in force until the period of the German Protectorate over this country. While this continuity may seem surprising, a parallel of the same system actually carried on virtually unaltered during the interwar period, and even in postwar Czechoslovakia, in other fields as well, such as in the case of the Austrian rules of theatre operations, dating from 1850. The situation was different in the area of film censorship, which was decentralized in Austria whereas the newly formed Czechoslovak state immediately assigned it a centralized status. In 1913, when a four-member censorship board was set up in each land of the Habsburg monarchy, the mandatory composition of their membership reflected the time's prevailing tendency towards the criminalization of cinemas as schools of crime. The social standing of cinema as an institution changed considerably after the outbreak of the First World War during which cinemas came to serve as sources of funding for war casualties, widows and orphans. Immediately after the creation of the “national” state of Czechs and Slovaks process of the dominant ethnic groups'patronizing approaches towards the German and Hungarian minorities. This scenario was then newly accelerated after the introduction of sound film in 1929/30. The book also deals with the tendency towards centralization which was topped off by the nationalization of the film industry in Czechoslovakia, but whose roots reach as far back as the 1930s. The text is accompanied by an extensive body of archival documents whose sum furnishes an authentic graphic evidence of the book's subject matter. |
