In the realm of copyright, films and other audiovisual productions have become the archetypal complex work. The range of creative participants in the production of a film is often extensive, the risk to investors is considerable. Yet the prospects for the lucky few who succeed in scoring a hit with viewers are celestial: a powerful flow of revenues from the film itself, at the box-office and on television, a parallel stream from the sale of merchandise, and ultimately the chance of making sequels and other follow-ons. The legal organisation behind these exploitations turns at root on copyright protection and in economic detail upon contractual relationships. In future, technological controls over the exploitation of digital material will become increasingly crucial. The governing law has developed in different countries in response to pressures from national film-makers and also from powerful outsiders, led by the Leviathan that is Hollywood. On the film scene in Europe, Americanophobia is never far from the surface – as the negotiators of the GATT–WTO accord discovered as it was ripening for signature in 1994.

Beside these festering jealousies, there are differences of basic attitude: is film a grubby little form of mass entertainment, a tinsel make-believe which ordinary people need and will pay for in large numbers? Or is it the great new art of the twentieth century, through which directors illuminate our human condition in comparable degree with the greatest masters of language and music and the plastic arts?