ABSTRACT
Film was an international invention and was always characterised by the flow of the technology, genres and subjects associated with it. Many writers, directors, actors, cinematographers and film composers have worked in more than one country. European film industries elsewhere enjoyed short-term benefit from the post-war slump. For a brief time, they were able to produce more cheaply, regaining some of the market share they had lost to Hollywood. Although comedy, perhaps the most popular genre of the period, continued to appeal to the family audience, in West Germany, as elsewhere, genre movies like the Heimatfilm were being displaced by films specifically aimed at male adolescent viewers – mystery films based on the novels by the British writer Edgar Wallace. European audiences enjoy a great variety of films, from films made in their own country and language, through European co-productions, and films from other regions of the world to Hollywood films.
