Cinema is a French success story. There still IS a French cinema. British film is now mostly a branch office of Hollywood. All the more reason to take seriously the complicated row about French movie finances, a Breton billionaire and possible Far Right influence on film-making which has broken out during the Cannes film festival. Settle down with your popcorn. The story-line is fascinating but not always what it seems. Throw in a gratuitous sex-scene and it would make a typical French movie. It all
started last week when 600 French film people, mostly obscure but also including the great actress Juliette Binoche, signed an open letter in the newspaper Libération warning of the growing power in French cinema of the right- wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré. There was little reaction at the time. All the main organisations which represent French films refused to sign the letter which was written by a group called “Zapper Bolloré”. The letter complained that the Canal Plus cable TV network, majority owned by Bolloré, was
moving towards 100 percent ownership of UGC, one of France’s biggest cinema operators and also a backer of films. The signatories complained that “leaving French cinema in the hands of a far-right owner” would risk “not only the standardisation of films, but a fascist takeover of the collective imagination”. They had legitimate reason to be worried. Bolloré’s companies control the most popular French 24-hours TV channel CNews, which spews extreme right-wing propaganda. (Think Fox News, without the balance.) He has taken over the once excellent
Sunday newspaper Journal du Dimanche and turned it into a mouthpiece of the nationalist-populist, Europhobic and pro-Russian Right. Last month more than 100 writers left the Bolloré-controlled publishing house Grasset en masse after the firing of its much-respected boss Olivier Nora. “We refuse to be hostages in an ideological war that seeks to impose authoritarianism everywhere in culture and the media,” they wrote. There is a problem, however. No evidence exists (as the writers of the Libération letter admit) that political bias or pressure exists
in StudioCanal, the film-making arm of Canal Plus, which is the biggest movie financier in Europe. The French film industry is on the whole pleased that Canal Plus is planning to expand its stake in UGC and defend movies as something people “go out to” as well as watch on their phones. Canal Plus will help to finance 50 films this year, about a quarter of those made in France. Its recent movies include a biopic on Robert Badinter, the lawyer and politician who abolished
the death penalty in France in the 1980s and a lesbian comedy-romance, La Vie d’Une Femme – neither of which are classical Hard Right material. The Zapper Bolloré collective says their letter was intended to warn about what might happen in the future. It did not criticise the choices made by Canal Plus today. The fact remains that, since the letter was published, part of the audiences at this month’s Cannes film festival have booed the Canal Plus logo whenever it appears on the screen.
To some left-leaning film people in France Canal Plus is wicked by association with Bolloré – even though Canal Plus is one of the reasons why a relatively flourishing French film industry still exists. Then this week came the plot twist. The head of Canal Plus Maxime Saada announced that he was blacklisting all 600 signatories of the Libération letter. “If some people are prepared to call Canal Plus crypytofascist, I cannot agree to work them any longer. The limit has been reached,” he said.
What a stupid reaction. Saada has, in effect, validated the letter-writers’ claim that Canal Plus is authoritarian and judges film-makers on political lines. In truth, Saada’s threat is almost certainly meaningless. Will Canal Plus really refuse to finance any film starring Juliette Binoche?. Will it scrutinise the small-print of the credits for second grips or third assistant hair-dressers who are among the 600 letter-signers (now swollen to 2,000). The black-list will be forgotten. So who is right and who is wrong? For film industry people
to attack one of the main sources of their funding was either clumsy or courageous – probably both. The letter might have been more effective if it had also recognised and praised the contribution of Canal Plus to the survival of the French cinema. And yet the Zapper Bolloré collective has a point. The Breton billionaire has a self-appointed mission to change the way that France thinks. Donald Trump could not have existed without Fox News. The constant barrage of nationalist-populist propaganda and conspiracy theories
on CNews is responsible in part for the rise of the Rassemblement National in the opinion polls. There is no sign that the same views are being imposed on the movie-making arm of Canal Plus. Far Right propaganda works on cable TV. It is hard to make it profitable in the cinema. Bolloré likes money as well as right-wing politics. He is not a billionaire for nothing. But what if we do have a President Jordan Bardella next year? Would French movie-makers come under pressure
to portray the nationalist-populist revolution in a positive light? Or at least to avoid subjects which the Far Right prefer not to discuss, like the positive contribution of many immigrants to French life? To have a man like Vincent Bolloré bestride TV news, publishing AND cinema is inherently dangerous.
Cannes, Canal Plus, Vincent Bolloré, UGC, Libération, Juliette Binoche, StudioCanal, CNews, Grasset, Olivier Nora, Zapper Bolloré, Maxime Saada