Film en het moderne leven in Limburg. Het bioscoopwezen tussen commercie en katholieke cultuurpolitiek (1909-1929) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2007)

In October 1912 the doomed steamer Titanic arrived in the town of Venlo, on celluloid. Exceptionally, all three Venlo cinemas screened a film depicting a dramatized reconstruction of the tragic shipwreck. Months before these film shows, local newspapers had printed the latest tidings on the sinking of the Titanic that had been cabled across the Atlantic. Whether it was in the posh 'Elite Bioscope' or in the Roman Catholic Saint Pius Club Cinema, the sources claim that all audiences were in tears when viewing the maritime catastrophe on the white screen, accompanied by the famous hymn 'Nearer my God to thee'. The story about the Titanic entered into the daily lives of Venlo's inhabitants, women even chanted a special song about the disaster while cleaning their houses. The expanding range and availability of means of mass communication and transportation caused local communities like those in Venlo to connect more than ever before to the world beyond local boundaries. After the spread in the nineteenth century of such innovations as steam power generated transportation, the telegraph and the mass press, it was the cinema that emerged in the early decades of the previous century as a new channel of communication that changed local perspectives on the world outside and simultaneously the way members of local communities looked upon and behaved towards each other. The aim of this book is to provide a deeper understanding of the development of a local and regional infrastructure of cinema exhibition as an element in a larger process of modernization that at the same time stimulated that modernization process. The main focus of the book is on the dynamics of cultural adaptation and resistance accompanying the rise of the cinema exhibition industry in the Dutch province Limburg. How did the cinema integrate into the everyday life of the – predominantly Roman Catholic – inhabitants of this region? The empirical basis for this study stems from painstaking historical research of municipal and other archives, newspapers and magazines, surviving business records, etcetera. This research is part of an increasing attention in the field of film studies for the social and cultural history of movie going (Allen 2006). In this study I have made use of the concept of the cultural intermediary or broker. Cultural historians have adopted this concept from anthropologists during the 1970s and 1980s. It has been used successfully in early modern media history, for instance on the influence of the printing press (Ginzburg 1982, Darnton 1984), but in film studies the term had not yet been applied (Maltby 2006). In brief, cultural brokers negotiate the appropriation of meaning. More concrete, in this research the most prominent intermediary is the cinema owner. He acted as a gatekeeper deciding in what manner and circumstances and in what dosage his audiences were exposed to an international film culture consisting predominantly of foreign products. The exhibitor chose marketing strategies and constructed the social image of his theatre. He balanced the demands of his audiences against for instance the interests of his suppliers, the distributors, or the pressures of government and church authorities. 213 Summary The province of Limburg was a relatively recent addition to the Dutch kingdom, dating from the 1830s. The almost homogeneously Catholic population did not have a strong sense of belonging to the predominantly Protestant Dutch nation. During the early decades of the twentieth century – the same period when cinema exhibition developed into an institution – a sudden boom of the coal mining industry in the southeast of the province accelerated the modernization of Limburg. Concerned elites aimed to control the socio-economic transformation of the region by a 'rechristianization' of the population, that was paired to a wider Catholic aspiration to more political power and influence within the Dutch state. Against this background, Limburg proved to be suitable for a study on a regional mesoscale between the strictly local case study and the (inter)national overview. The integration of cinema into the fabric of Limburg society took place in a dynamic interplay between local, regional and national levels. For instance, in 1918 in the national trade press a cinema owner from Maastricht cried out for help against oppressive local government measures. This distress call prompted Dutch cinema exhibitors to form a national league to protect their interests. Another local conflict in Venlo during 1921-1922 was crucial in the further development of the relations between the Catholics and the cinema industry during the interwar years. Some local conflicts turned out to have wider repercussions. And alternately, changes on larger scale were appropriated in different ways by local intermediaries. After two introductory chapters the book starts with local studies in the three cities where most of the research was concentrated: Maastricht, Venlo and the mining district around Heerlen. The Maastricht chapter explores the relationship between the cinema exhibition industry and organized leisure activities in clubs and associations. The Venlo chapter focuses on the so called 'cinema war' that broke out in 1921 and because of which all cinemas in town closed for almost a year. The Heerlen chapter demonstrates a different approach by local intermediaries, instead of head-on conflict, cinema owners and political and religious authorities chose to look for compromises and more peaceful accommodation. After these local studies, the following three chapters zoom out to regional and national connections. The first of these three is about the different strategies for legitimizing a new generation of cinema theatres socially and culturally. Because during the 1920s Catholic approval of the cinema was becoming unlikely, entrepreneurs tried to find other forms of respectability, for instance by 'posing' as a legitimate theatre. Many exhibitors stressed the ideologically more neutral virtues of efficiency and convenience that were associated with metropolitan modernity, but then combined with small-town cosiness and familiarity. The following chapter is about the foundation of the regional Catholic film censorship organization in 1923. Consecutively, the last chapter is about the major conflict that arose in 1929 between the Catholic censorship organization and the Dutch Cinema League. This struggle is an interesting complex of interests: national versus local governments, cinema exhibitors versus distributors, different Catholic factions versus each other. For months the cinemas in numerous southern cities and towns were closed, until finally the Dutch Prime Minister personally forced an agreement. The incorporation of the cinema in Limburg took place in three stages, an early period (1909- 1918), a transitional period (1918-1922) and a period of consolidation (1922-1929). In roughly the first decade of the fixed location cinema in Limburg, local intermediaries were predominant in negotiating the place of (their) cinema in their respective towns, acting as gatekeepers between the 'foreign' film culture and their home market. Different strategies were explored 214 in 'packaging and promoting' the cinema (Waller 1995). One option was seeking respectability by associating with 'high culture', such as theatre, literature and art. This strategy was partly facilitated by several international film production companies in a similar drive for legitimization of the film industry (Uricchio and Pearson 1993). From quite early on, local Catholic organizations set up their own cinemas, offering Limburg citizens another way of appropriating cinema in explicitly Catholic surroundings. The techniques of yet other entrepreneurs were less camouflaging, and instead stressing the spectacular, emotional, exciting aspects that made the cinema attractive to many, but also threatening to others. During World War I, and especially immediately after the armistice, the popularity of the cinema boomed. The international market had been drastically restructured and was now firmly dominated by the Americans. In the Netherlands, film distributors gained influence over the exhibitors, causing a shift of power from local to supralocal entrepreneurs. The tension between the film industry and Limburg authorities increased in the years 1918-1922, that formed a watershed in the Catholic approach of the cinema in Limburg. Of several conflicts over local entertainment taxes, censorship or age restrictions, the 'cinema war' in Venlo of 1921-1922 was a key controversy that set the agenda for the years to come. In 1921 Dutch exhibitors and distributors had united into the Dutch Cinema League. By helping two 'regular' Venlo exhibitors in their struggle against two Catholic cinemas supported by the local government, the newly formed League used this local quarrel to demonstrate its power by ordering a film boycott and finally – after almost a year of cinema closures – forcing the municipal council to yield to their demands. No matter what the direct cause was, conflicts centred on the perceived sinfulness of film culture. The cinema functioned, negatively, as a mark stone to define a Catholic identity. The gap between local culture and cinema culture was augmented by the increasing influence of distributors from the more metropolitan western part of Holland. In this context the exhibitor lost a measure of agency in shaping the local cinema culture. This was in fact recognized by both 'sides': some Catholic authorities regarded the exhibitors as helpless victims forced to screen the depraved products of national distributors and international producers. This was partly justified because the exhibitor had a decreasing influence over what films he would rent. On the other hand, the distributors considered their local clients just as much as the victims of their paternalistic governments. The surviving written sources show the appearance of a clear divide between church and cinema, in the trade press as much as in political, religious or newspaper discourses. For the average cinema patron, this divide probably was less strict, illustrated by the simple fact that 98 percent of Limburg was Catholic and at the same time the cinema business was flourishing thanks to those Catholic audiences. Outside of the periods of intensified conflict, most exhibitors attempted to avoid controversy and keep all parties satisfied (worldly and religious authorities, the branch organization and of course their patrons). In fact, cinema exhibition in Limburg became a quite stable industry during the 1920s, often run as a family business, sometimes for several generations. Usually competition was weak, in some areas the industry was even monopolized by a single entrepreneur, owning several cinemas. However, actual cinema chains beyond the local level never developed, corresponding with the Dutch pattern in general. Catholic cinemas did never really thrive, as far as can be judged from the sparse information that was recovered. They always consisted of uneasy compromises between the commer- 215 cial potential and the moral danger of the cinema. But after the Venlo conflict, Catholics have never succeeded in setting up an exhibition infrastructure with a genuine economical viability. After the introduction of inflammable 16mm film, in the 1930s a modest circuit of Catholic film shows was created (predominantly in villages without fixed location cinema), but this never became a commercial threat to the regular film industry. Authorities realized that controlling the potentially controversial cinematic content could hardly succeed on the local level of exhibition. Since influencing film production was largely out of reach for Dutch Catholics, most efforts were concentrated on the distribution branch. In 1923 the mayors of 18 cities and towns in the Catholic South, in the provinces of Limburg and Brabant, were united in a regional censorship association. From here on, the most significant disputes between Catholics and the cinema industry were not local, but regional. Although the Cinema League protested against this semi-private club of mayors regulating a significant portion of the national market, unquestionably there were advantages too. Instead of a host of unpredictable local censorship committees there was one authority that could pass a film for the entire south at once. On top of that, the single censor that personally judged all southbound films, Bernard de Wolf, was not insensitive to bribery. His approval in 1926 of battleship potemkin caused outrage in the Catholic South. It is likely that the Dutch distributor of this anticipated box office hit had De Wolf on his payroll and forced him to pass the film. De Wolf was a classical cultural intermediary: powerful and vulnerable at the same time. In the end he did not sustain bridging the moral universe of conservative mayors to a young upstart cinema industry governed by the laws of the market. From its inception, the regional censorship initiative was connected to national politics. In 1918 the first Catholic Prime Minister, Charles Ruijs de Beerenbrouck, was sworn into office. He originated from the south of Limburg. His attempts to create legislation was rewarded only after ten years when in 1928 the national Cinema Act went into effect. In the mean time, he had supported the regional Catholic censorship organization. The Cinema League refused to accept the continued existence of the Catholic censorship under the new Cinema Act, while the Catholics insisted on continuing their regional censorship in addition to the national board of censorship. This led to the biggest confrontation between Catholics and the Cinema League, when 25 cinemas in 12 cities and towns the South were closed for five months. This time the Cinema League gave in, under personal pressure from the Prime Minister, but perhaps even more urgently because of the crisis caused by the transformation to sound film that had repercussions in the film business everywhere. After the settlement in 1929, the relations between the cinema industry and the Catholic authorities became less strained. The regional censorship arrangement safeguarded a sense of regional Catholic identity, guaranteeing at least a degree of control over cinema culture. Simultaneously, the vast majority of films passed the censors, and were as a result implicitly sanctioned by the Catholic authorities. In spite of the repeated reassurance that films were only 'admitted', not 'approved', in this way the censorship stimulated the integration of film culture into Limburg society.