2013: The Crisis of French Cinema and the Triumph of Hollywood

After an elating 2012, thanks to the global popular success of “The Untouchables” and “The Artist” at the Oscars, French cinema sunk into a deep crisis in 2013. It was an off year, according to producer Vincent Maraval, who shed light on everything that was not going well with the system beyond these two successes: generally very bloated budgets, artists overpaid compared to what they brought in, choices that depended too much on the criteria of television chains and a financing system in danger. It is television companies that pay for films; if they are not receiving products that garner them audiences in exchange, sooner or later they will obtain a change in the system.

We could add to the list that producers are not working hard enough: They give the green light to films that are not finished and do not require their writers to work as much as needed. The result? A bad year in theaters, with a reduction in admissions by 10 percent over one year, which is huge. Not because of American films, which maintained their numbers, but because of repeated French failures, notably, at Pathe’s, which did not recover from Claude Berri’s death, but also in Vincent Maraval’s own house, Wild Bunch, which until the triumphs of “Blue Is the Warmest Color” and “9-Month Stretch” was in a shaky position.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the opposite is happening: Hollywood has racked up negative critiques because it rests on its laurels of trademarks that are declining into not very imaginative sagas year after year. Superheroes are run of the mill, but this pleases. Sure, very expensive flops have made heads roll: “Lone Ranger,” “RIPD: The Phantom Brigade,” “After Earth” and now “Ronin 47” have racked up hundreds of millions in losses, but “Iron Man 3,” “The Hobbit,” “Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” “World War Z,” “Despicable Me 2,” or even “Gravity” filled the coffers.

While the cadres of Hollywood were just counting their losses during a bad summer, they finished off the year by cracking open the champagne: Tickets sold very well at Christmas, thanks to the late Disney and “The Hobbit.” The 2012 domestic sales record of $10.8 billion must have been surpassed by a hair, but it is above all the international one that has changed things: China became a major market, and international revenues will therefore climb by 5 percent.

So, Hollywood’s global dominance becomes more and more manifest: Multiplex construction in emerging economies barely profits on anything besides its products, which allows it to act like piracy does not exist. As for French cinema, so it pays for its great mistake: If it has survived through the years — which in itself is a miracle — if it has become the third global industry in its sector, it is thanks to a financing method that leans on French television and which allows it to get along without public successes in theaters as well as in export. It is its luck — it never flounders — but also its limit: It never progresses too far ahead and runs the risk of disappearing the day the French government stops supporting it.