French cultural policy and the cinematic landscape of postwar Saarland: Comparative research on small-town and big-city cinemas, 1945–1955

This article offers a case study of cultural policy in the post-World War II period in a transitional, often disputed, European region, the Saarland. It tries to illustrate how the French government struggled to infiltrate Saarland’s cinematic landscape from 1945 to 1955. Preferably by means of cultural and documentary films either respecting the specifities of a Saarland mentality and socio-structure or glorifying the region as a flagship European border country, Saarland’s inhabitants should be proselytized from their one-way orientation towards Germany and instead become more open to French culture and customs. However, in the final analysis we found that the impact of French cultural policy on Saarland’s filmic and cinematic landscape remained what it was from the outset: a top-down policy-programme control and ideal conception that was either totally rejected as French high culture or only slightly diffused into the everyday reality of their targeted recipients.