Faye Bartram, University of Iowa

Reel Results After One Week: The Cinema and French Cold War Cultural Diplomacy with the USSR, 1955-1972 Faye Bartram, University of Iowa In October 1955, crowds of “delirious” fans armed with bouquets rushed the delegation of eleven diplomats, filmmakers and movie stars representing France at the first Semaine du cinema français dans l’URSS (The Week of French Cinema in the USSR, hereafter, the French Semaine).1 This week-long film festival brought French classics and new releases, as well as officials and celebrities, to the Soviet Union. The Semaine was a “smashing success,” according to the French and Soviet presses, delegation reports, and personal accounts, as well as the 250,000 tickets sold.2 At most of the public showings in Moscow and Leningrad that year, “the audience spilled out into the hallways.”3 The fervor among the Russians for French cinema continued unabated at each French The author would like to humbly thank Jennifer Sessions, Terrence Peterson, and David Shneer for their tireless dedication. 1 Guy Desson, delegation report, 2 November 1955, Fonds du Ministère de la culture et de la communication, direction du CNC, series 19900289, box 144, Archives Nationales- Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (AN-P). The French delegation included Jacques Flaud, the executive director of the Centre national du cinéma (CNC), M. Wernert, the Foreign Minister’s Deputy Director of Cultural Relations, and from UniFrance, Robert Cravenne and Raoul Ploquin. There was also Guy Desson, an avid socialist and President of the French Audiovisual Council, and Marcel Hubsch, the president of the French Union of Producers of Educational Short Films. Celebrities in tow included Danielle Darrieux, Dany Robin, Nicole Courcel, René Clair, Gérard Philipe, Marina Vlady, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, and film critics such as Régis Bergeron, Jean de Baroncelli and Georges Sadoul. 2 Régis Bergeron, “La semaine du cinéma français à Moscou,” Les Lettres françiases (19 October 1955): 1, G. Alexandrov, "Nedelia frantsuzskogo kino," Pravda 17 October 1955. Ticket sales indicated in Hubert Cau’s delegation report, 2 November 1955, Fonds du Ministère de la culture et de la communication, direction du CNC, series 19760010, box 29, AN-P. 3 Maurice Dejean, general semaine report, 12 December 1961, series 19900289, box 144, AN-P. Bartram 31 Semaine thereafter. The Soviet administration, however, would only authorize a French Semaine in 1955 if a Soviet Semaine took place in France. For the first time since the state launched the French Semaine project in 1950 the hosting nation demanded its own Semaine. In the end, each Semaine mirrored the other: seven feature films and seven shorts were shown at three similar quality theaters in two major cities, with both sides equally sharing the financial burden.4 While Cold War tensions generally separated East from West, the USSR maintained unusually friendly cultural and diplomatic relations with France until 1972. Unlike the intense, often bitter rivalry that shaped Soviet exchange with the United States, or the cultural imperialism of its relationships with Eastern Europe, the USSR’s cultural affairs with France were cooperative. This was in large part due to the French state’s efforts to secure its international standing after the Second World War. Based on an analysis of negotiation transcripts, and state, ministry, and embassy documents, this article argues that to reassert its position as global power, the French state chiefly relied on specific models of cultural diplomacy as a principal means of building international prestige during the Cold War. Cinema, in particular, proved a useful tool, namely the projects of the French Semaine and the Franco-Soviet Permanent Mixed Commission (hereafter, the Commission Mixte). The example of the French and Soviet Semaines from 1955 through 1972 represents a unique case study in Cold War bilateral cultural diplomatic relations and strategies. The Soviet administration’s insistence on its own Semaine necessitated discussions, which in turn spurred the formation of a bilateral commission in charge of negotiating cultural exchange between France and the Soviet Union, called a “Commission Mixte,” (mixed commission). The first of its kind, the Commission Mixte became a diplomatic strategy that both the Fourth and Fifth Republics employed. The Commission Mixte stabilized and secured the flow of exchange between France and the USSR, and therefore the dissemination of French culture in one of the world’s largest landmasses. It also ensured a French diplomatic presence remained intact notwithstanding France’s international standing at any given moment. The Commission Mixte’s negotiations, the agreements struck, and the ability to successfully execute protocols with the USSR touted France’s diplomatic prowess to an increasingly bipolarized world, providing another project to maintain global standing. At the same time, the Semaines and the Commission Mixte also helped restrain Communist elements at home—specifically the Association France-URSS (hereafter, the AFU), a Franco-Soviet friendship society that the government had long monitored for suspicious activity. At a time when international tensions between the USSR and other Western governments were otherwise debilitating, France, through a commitment to cultural diplomacy and exchange, was still 4 Semaine negotiation general report, 22 June 1955, series 19900289, box 144, AN-P. Journal of the Western Society for French History 32 Reel Results After One Week able to work closely with the Soviet Union. Therefore, the examination of the Semaines and the Commission Mixte has further implications as well. As this article maintains, the Semaines and the Commission Mixte were the first major step towards détente, which France and the USSR reached in 1964, a full eight years before other Western states. These projects provided the foundational framework for Franco-Soviet cultural diplomacy and set in place bilateral structures upon which to build détente. Moving away from the Soviet-American rivalry that informs much of the framework for Cold War history, this article eschews that binary with a discussion of cultural diplomacy between France and the USSR from 1955 through 1972. 5 My analysis joins Eleonor Gilburd and Sudha Rajagopalan’s departure from this bi-polar perspective.6 The French state’s efforts to assert itself as a diplomatic authority and an independent alternative to the American and Soviet paths influenced the course of the Cold War. France’s cultural diplomatic strategy of the Semaine and Commission Mixte with the USSR show how government committees operated across political divides in ways that challenge the grand Cold War narrative that Frederico Ramero champions of two superpowers competing to “master change without blowing up the planet,” or even Odd Arnes Westad’s case for a pluralist approach.7 In most studies of France’s Cold War interactions, political relations, heads of state, and the US take priority.8 This, however, not only neglects other important avenues of diplomacy, such as France’s system of commission mixtes, the first of which was formed with the USSR in 1956, but also specific French diplomats’ vital roles. As Erez Manela demonstrates, we need to recognize the role of international organizations and individual historical actors in the Cold War.9 Scholars that do discuss Cold War contact between France and the Soviet Union, such as Marie-Pierre Rey and Thomas Gomart, chiefly emphasize politics and 5 Some noteworthy Cold War studies are: Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), and Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, eds., Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History (London: Frank Cass. 2004). 6 Eleonor Gilburd’s article “Picasso in Thaw Culture,” Cahiers du monde russe 47 (January-July 2006): 65-108, and Sudha Rajagopalan, Indian Films in Soviet Cinemas: The Culture of Movie-Going after Stalin (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2008). 7 Frederico Romero, “Cold War Historiography at the Crossroads,” Cold War History 14 (2014): 690, Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 8 For example, Philippe Moreau Defarges, Les Etats-Unis et la France: la puissance entre mythes et réalités (Paris: IFRI, 1999), and Sebastian Reyn, Atlantis Lost: The American Experience with de Gaulle, 1958-1969 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010). 9 Erez Manela, “A Pox on Your Narrative: Writing Disease Control into Cold War History,” Diplomatic History 34 (April 2010): 301. 2016 Bartram 33 policy.10 While certainly of vital import, this scholarship has largely left unexamined important conduits for exchange and influence that can enrich our understanding of the nature of Franco-Soviet relations. Similarly, literature on French cultural production after 1945 tends to overlook the USSR. Scholarship of French cultural production after 1945 focuses on Franco-American contact, how American products created a new type of consumer society in France, or how interaction with the US affected changing definitions of French identity.11 With such a concentration on the US, exchange between France and the Soviet Union, cultural influence and transference, and the resulting political, international and diplomatic gains from this relationship have earned little recognition. Mise-en-scène The role of film in Cold War Franco-Soviet

Load more