HAShen the new cultural season is synonymous with joy and discovery, the month of September, now closed, spells disaster for cinema in France. It sold 7.38 million tickets in thirty days, the lowest level of attendance for the same period since 1980. And if we cross other data, we have to go back more than a century to arrive at such a low number.
This sad record, we felt it coming. It has been nine months since theaters lost 30% of their audience compared to 2019, the last year before Covid-19. More worryingly, the summer of 2022 totaled fewer admissions than the summer of 2021, yet hampered by the health pass. The situation is all the more serious in that box office receipts form the basis of the French model, so envied everywhere: big films, especially American ones, partly finance art house cinema, essentially French, through the through a tax levied on each ticket.
This pooling is effective and virtuous as long as the public follows in large and small films. This is no longer the case. Blockbusters are doing well, but there are fewer of them, while auteur cinema is falling sharply. Everyone will reassure themselves with counter-examples but the reality is there.
Offensive
Figures are the only subject on which the family of French cinema finds itself. When it comes to causes and remedies, the rifts are deep, let’s say between those who see cinema first as an art and those who consider it an industry. The former, while calling for states general, met Thursday, October 6 in Paris to denounce the “uninhibited market logic” of the State and the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image. They are worried about an investment of 350 million euros intended to promote in France writing, films, rhythms, images that would be modeled on American standards – Hollywood and the platforms.
The charge must be heard but besides the fact that it is far from being unanimous, it would first of all be elegant to recall the hundreds of millions that the State injected into the cinema during the health crisis. And then the offensive would be more credible if it were accompanied by a minimum of self-criticism and if angry subjects were not obliterated.
When asked why the public is going to see art films less, the rebels cite inflation, the drop in purchasing power, the pandemic, platforms, TV series… They do not wonder if their films are part of the problem. They do not question the evolution of society and customs, and even less the quality of the works, the unfinished scripts, the badly put together staging, the mediocre sound… Ask these questions, and you will be accused of being a populist or a sold at the market.
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