Culture, Commerce and Communism: The Rise of American Influence Seen Through Postwar European Cinema (1920-1960)

This thesis evaluates how films from Western Europe portray the social, political and economic degradation that allows the American influence to rise leading up to the Cold War. Specifically, this thesis evaluates classic films from Weimar Germany, the Soviet Union, post-fascist Italy and post-Vichy France as historical and cultural artifacts that depict the harsh conditions of postwar life and how American influence revitalized daily European life. While the American influence (defined as the support of democracy, technological modernization and a capitalist economy) was supported by many struggling Europeans who looked to the United States as a standard to rebuild, critics from each country viewed American influence as a threat to the stability of national independence which they sought to maintain as recovery balanced postwar society.