Legitimisation in a Small Nation: The Making of Film Into Art in Norway, 1945–1969

Abstract

This thesis examines the development in the status of film in Norway. Asking the question of how film was elevated from mass entertainment into serious art, the thesis traces the various efforts of critics and filmmakers to increase its status. Building on Shyon Baumann’s conceptual framework of how an art field for film is created, the thesis investigates how external factors (changes in media and leisure ecology), institutionalisation (trade organisations and interest organisations) and legitimising discourses (development in the critical discourses) served to establish film as an art form. The central assumption is that agents in the field, intentionally and unintentionally, promoted film as art, and that they drew upon international developments and discourses in this process. Using the case of Norway provides an understanding of how an art field of film came about in a “small nation” with a small domestic market, where the state perception of film had a large impact on the field through crucial subsidies. To the Norwegian film history, it has contributed an understanding of how the national cinema in Norway was positioned within an international context, and critically investigated the assumption among scholars that film became art in the 1960s. To the topic of transnational film, this thesis contributes to the understanding of how art discourses are transferred to a national context.