Hollywood e l’Informational Media Guaranty Program nel contesto della guerra fredda: promuovere per escludere?

Abstract

Using sources mostly unpublished, this brief paper aims to review and expand a segment of the research field originally explored by Thomas H. Guback, whose pioneering work still represents a fundamental historiographical landmark for those who study the expansion of American motion pictures industry within the context of the American cultural diplomacy. Moving from the specific circumstances affecting post-war Germany, the cultural historian generally concludes that Hollywood and Washington represented, on the international scenario, a "coalescence of interests". However, for what concerns the kind of film to be distributed, business affairs and affairs of state were proved to be, practically if not theoretically, difficult to assemble. This is what emerges from the documents belonging to the Economic Cooperation Administration and its Advisory Committee on Motion Picture Guaranties, in charge of selecting the entertainment commercial films that would have had a financial support as part of a project called Informational Media Guaranty Program. Generally speculating, the idea presented is that the mentioned plan allowed American functionaries to cope with the alleged issue of potential negative influence of Hollywood on the foreign public without harming, at least directly, the principle of free expression, considered as sacred