Le soutien à la production cinématographique française : à qui profite l’exception culturelle?

French cinema benefits from a massive public support: the aids verge on 38% of the unassisted value of the cinematographic production, and the effective rate of assistance approaches 101% of the value added. The assistance certainly brings about an abundant production (240 films were accredited in 2005 by the National Centre for Cinematography) but it does not seek to sustain the quality and the creativity of French cinema. The concentration and the constancy of the public manna on few integrated and powerful firms reveal how incoherent, regarding its cultural ambitions, the French policy is. The detailed calculations of the effective rate of assistance of Gaumont and EuropaCorp, confirm the capture of the cinematographic policy by a few firms that are completely embedded in international competition and markets. In 2002, the direct and indirect aids represent 95% of the value added produced by EuropaCorp, and 90% of the one produced by Gaumont. The point is not to criticise the existence of a market-oriented French cinema: it obeys a legitimate and crucial logic. However, those films and those firms could now subsist on their own on the market. In its current shape, the French cinematographic policy does not improve cultural diversity but on the contrary amplifies the market failures (improper concentration, standardisation of one part of the production, imitation of Hollywood Blockbusters). Moreover, the support system has progressively become illegible. New aids have recurrently been created: they are now numerous, intertwined and above all incoherent. Those mechanisms result in such a complex system that few agents are really aware of their position in the system: are they net winners or net losers of the current architecture? The uncertainty drives them not to reform the system and reinforces the global inertia. Nothing but a detailed assessment of the support system will allow getting out of the statu quo.