Cinema in the inter-war years: the limits of municipal cultural policy? The example of Suresnes

In the process by which culture was gradually established as a legitimate object for management by local government during the inter-war years, the cinema represents a case that is at once sui generis and revelatory of many of the interests that were at stake. Those few local councils which sought to make cinema part of their cultural action by establishing municipal movie theatres had to be prepared to take on the private commercial sector: Professional exhibitors would invariably band together to fight what they saw as illegitimate competition. The case of Suresnes, a city in the western suburbs of Paris, can provide many insights into both the theorical debates and the practical actions that shaped the cultural policy of local councils at this period. The socialist SFIO council of Suresnes, elected in 1919, decided as early as 1920 to set up a municipal cinema - an institution which was almost unknown in France at that time. The Suresnes cinema continued in regular operation until 1939. However, at the end of the thirties, the management of one of the town's private cinemas embarked on a long drawn-out battle with the council, through which they sought to deny that the council had the right to run an operation which they defined as purely commercial.