When Hitler and Mussolini declared that they would no longer import Hollywood films for viewing, they inadvertently gave birth to a new kind of Hollywood - a Hollywood that would now produce movies criticizing European Fascism:
"But now Hollywood's oppressed minority sees a ray of hope. An open season has been declared on dictators and subversive elements in our own back yards."
"Hitler has thrown us out, bag and baggage... No one in Germany, except the German people, wants to see an American film, and the people find it wiser to leave their desires unuttered... It is quite possible that these two iron-handed gentlemen have started something that may lead to a Declaration of Independence for the American screen."
"It is more than likely that the various reasons given for barring or limiting American films are merely excuses. The real reason is fear. Dictators do not want their followers to see the life of a people who have freedom of thought, of politics, and of religion; to feel the joy of living which permeates most American films as a result of individual liberty. They want their people to see America as a land in which democracy has failed; where all women are jitterbugs, and most men gangsters; where lynching has become a substitute for law, and desire for wealth the sole national motive; where most of the population is unemployed, the rest underpaid, and the government interested only in collecting unjust debts from poor but honest foreigners."
