ABSTRACT
One cannot perhaps overestimate the amount of this moralizing, which was directly attributable to a reaction against Hollywood and all it stood for. Certainly in the United States in the twenties and thirties there was an intellectual snobbery that focused interest exclusively on European, Russian, Japanese, etc., movies: Holly wood was regarded as just a trash factory. One came across these views even after the war. Hollywood’s open brashness and vulgarity, its scandals and notoriety, probably did grave damage-by-association to the image of the cinema: why should, and how could, one take that place and its works seriously? To the snobs the best thing to do with nasty ephemera was to turn away and hope that it moves. Contemplating all those well-scrubbed Russian peasants driving tractors to the rhythms of montage was much more edifying.
