Most of europe and Asia (not Britain), innovated on sound film and the art of film. This was made by the second world war, forcing some directors to make painful decisions, but the pursuit of film prevailed.
Jean Renoir had fled to America when the nazis invaded France and continued his career. His films in America received little successes and were only praised by the Italian neo-realists. From then to 1939, he created his the last of his first batch of great films, including La Regale du jeu(1939) which is considered to be his magnum opus. While in American, Renoir’s French fan base was turning on him as a “sellout” who used the studio system
Rene Clair went to england to direct The Ghost Goes West (1935) after the international success of his first sound film. Although it was a huge success, he found working with the producer frustrating, and moved to America in hopes for more creative freedom - it ultimately didn’t work out that way. he stayed in american until the end of the war, as did Renoir.
Jean Cocteau stayed in france during the war, and created some of the most experimental and innovative films of the time. Le Sang d’un poète (1932), a surrealist production with in an indescribable plot. his utilized trick photography techniques to create an ethereal effect for the film. He wouldn’t direct another film till 1946, La Belle et la bête, the original beauty and the beast film adaptation. for next 20 or so years, he would release an amazing, surreal film every couple years. Jean Vigo on the other hand only released two films before he died at age 29. both received fairly mixed reviews on launch but are know considered incredibly ahead of their time.
The filmmakers who stayed in france worked to make subtle rebellious films or escapism. Some notable directors/micro-scenes include:
at the time, england had similar national media protection laws as canada, which only really hindered the country with the exception of Alexander Korda and Alfred Hitchcock. The aggressive business tactics of J. Arthur Rank didn’t help either, owning over a thousand theaters and more then half of england’s studios by 1945. Although the films Rank produced did prioritize profit, it did occasionally give very talented directors plenty of budget to make high scale and quality productions. Powell and Pressburger were a bit of a dynamic dou directing team that made some of the most accliamed films of the era by today’s standards, The Red Shoes (1948) and Peeping Tom (1960).
Documentary was a genre doing great thing in England. there was a rooster of directors that were pushing peoples conceptions of documentary closer to what it is today. The most interesting of which was Mary Field, who started the Children’s Entertainment Division at Rank’s Organization and founded Children’s Film Foundation.
The film industry swiftly became a service for the Nazi’s governed by Joseph Goebbel’s Reichsfilmkammer and Reichlichtspielgesetz. Arguably most of Germany’s film talent fled the country, especially when Reichlichtspielgesetz was put it - banned jews from working in cinema - so Goebbel imported some Hollywood “B” films to fill the void. Most films made at the time were propaganda, most notoriously Fritz Hippler’s Der Ewige Jude (1940), with anti-semantic passages that could have inspired the holocaust with its messaging. “Veit Harlan’s epic historical war drama Kolberg (1945), designed to be the Gone with the Wind of the Nazi cinema.” Gobble was the writer and screen writer of the project, as it was his dream to make a film of that proportion, made this quickly collapsed as the film was finished of the last days of the regime.
Leni Riefenstahl , who i think we mentioned before, was an german actress and dancer who quickly became a star and used the leverage to begin her directing career. She is considered to be the reich’s main director - her blond, athletic and attractive appearance caught the attention of hitler who would support her films financially and refer to her as “Aryan perfection.” She was given basically unlimited resources to make her magnum opus Triumph des Willens (1935) and later Olympia (1938) - both with universal acclaim and are still studied today. She found it difficult to find work after the war from her strong connections to the nazis. near the end of her life she claims she would have never worked with the nazis if she know what their intentions were. Regardless, she remains an extremely gifted anomaly.
Benito Mussolini merged every film company into a larger entity called the Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografice (ENIC). He also created Cinecittà, a giant movie studio that still stands today.
they, like most countries part of the war effort, made propagandist films, through theirs tended to be more about the duty and honour of protecting your country, rather than racism or glorifying war. Yasujiro Ozu was still making brilliant films, albeit purposely avoiding the topic of war, and a young Akira Kurosawa was beginning his carer and already making a name for himself for having a very fluid and engaging style akin to hollywood productions.
Soviet films were far from as innovative as they were during the first world war. Sergei Eisenstein continued as the only real significant director, as most others made mediocre propaganda films. this decline only continued when the war ended and it wasn’t until 1957 when the post-war boom happened.
Fun Fact: Stalin’s favorite film of the era was Grigori Aleksandrov’s slapstick comedy musical Volga-Volga (1938), which he allegedly regularly screened in his own home
Bombay was seeing a massive leap in studio quality, scale and culture priority that their studio system started to rival Hollywood - now nicknamed “Bollywood.” their most popular films were musicals, “costume dramas,” social reform films - films based on a popular novel series that gave advice on improving quality of life - and any film that starred famed actress and politian Nargis. Music was a staple of indian cinema and films would regularly have musical numbers, even if it wasn’t a musical or relevant to the film.
China started their film industry relatively late, only making their first fully chinese film company in 1922 and its wasn’t long until they had to stop to make propaganda films of their own. A civil war occurred once japan was defeated in 1945 and Mao slowly came to power. Mao had made a deal with the USSR to create films and newsreels politicizing the new regime - most of which were glorified commercials for Communism with no creativity.
Mexico was initially slow, but rapidly rose with sound cinema. there claim to fame at the time was Gabriel Figueroa, who some would argue revolutionized cinema with his cinematography on Citizen Kane. The Brazilian chanchada was a popular format of music based films on ne’re-do-wells running con games and entangled in love affairs. But Brazilian cinema never get on like mexican cinema, to the point where some directors unable to get deals in America would move to mexico to direct. They were also big on the neo-realist aesthetic, focusing on the life of the impoverished filmed on the streets with non-professional actors