Dear Harry/Dear Paul – Selling the Concept of European Art Cinema in the 1960s 

In a letter written in August 1966 to Harry Schein (1924-2006), head of the Swedish Film Institute, the prominent Hollywood agent Paul Kohner (1902 -1988) asks for advices. He wants to take over the foreign distribution of the leading Swedish film producer Svensk filmindustri (SF), and wants Schein to help him. This letter is picked out from a long-standing correspondence between Schein and Kohner (lasting from 1960 to 1984) on economical matters concerning Swedish cinema in general, especially in relation to the careers of Ingmar Bergman and Ingrid Thulin.

The 627 letters exchanged between Schein and Kohner (deposed in the personal archive of Harry Schein) are a source not only to the life and work of ceratin filmmakers and actors. The correspondence can also shed some light on strategies for the promotion of European art cinema in the US in the 1960s. Furthermore, the dialogue between Schein and Kohner represents discourses and attitudes regarding film as an art and as a medium in a time when the different institutions of cinema (criticism, production and governmental subsidies etc.) were changing rapidly.  

Key words: Film distribution, marketing strategies, national film politics, art cinema, 

References:

Citizen Schein (ed: Lars Ilshammar, Pelle Snickars & Per Vesterlund) (Stockholm: Kungliga biblioteket, 2010)

Elsaesser, Thomas, European Cinema: Face to Face With Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005)

Gomery, Douglas, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992)

Kohner, Fredrick, The Magician of Sunset Boulevard: The improbable life of Paul Kohner, Hollywood Agent (Palos Verdes: Morgan Press, 1977)

Staiger, Janet, Interpreting Films: Studies in the Reception of American Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)

Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition, ed. Andrew Nestingen & Trevor G. Elkington (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005)