This book’s treatment of the extensive circulation of European silent features and stars in Australasia reveals the vibrant transnationalism of silent film before the rise of Hollywood, and frames the emergence of art house cinema in the 1920s.

Through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century, this book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as having always dominated global film culture.

Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, bringing it all vividly to life.

Making ground-breaking use of digitized Australian and New Zealand newspapers, the author reconstructs the distribution and exhibition of European silent films in the Antipodes, along the way incorporating compelling biographical sketches of the ambitious pioneers of the Australasian cinema industry. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions.

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Part I: Film Distribution and Exhibition in Australasia before World War I

1. “A Window of the World”: Distribution and Exhibition of Early Film in Settler-Colonial Australasia
2. The Anglo-American Fathers of the Australian Combine: Cosens Spencer, T. J. West, and J. D. Williams
3. Trans-Tasman Cinema Traffic: Film Distribution and Exhibition in New Zealand Through World War I

Part II: European Films on Australasian Screens Through 1917

4. “THEIR WORK STANDS SUPREME”: Pathé Frères, Sarah Bernhardt, and French Art Films
5. “The most important event in the annals of the biograph in Australia”: The Triumph of Italian Historical Epics
6. “Like the hallmark on silver”: The Unquestioned Quality of Nordic Films
7. The Female Faces of German Film Abroad: Asta Nielsen, Henny Porten, and Madame Saharet
8. “We Fear No Combine”: Clement Mason’s European Film Imports in 1913

Part III: Competing with Hollywood on Quality

9. “Films as Foreign Offices:” Mason Super Films’ Promotion of Swedish and Italian Art Film in Australasia, 1919-25
10. The Rise of UFA, Cinema Art Films, and Anglo-German Solidarity against Hollywood

Works Cited
Appendix: Film List