100 Years of European Cinema : Entertainment or Ideology?

Cinema provides entertainment, but it also, inevitably, communicates a set of values, a vision of the world or an ideology.

From its beginnings more than a century ago, European cinema has dealt in a variety of ways with the tension between these two functions: at the extremes, dictatorial regimes have sweetened the pill of ideology with the sugar of entertainment.

Meanwhile, spectators have persisted in seeking out, above all, the pleasure film can provide.

This book explores the complex relationship between entertainment, ideology and audiences in European film, through studies that range from the Stalinist musicals of the 1930s, to cinematic representations of masculinity under Franco, to recent French films and their Hollywood re-makes.