From 1916 onwards, the Dutch cinema world was caught up in a process of change. The increasing dominance of American and German production companies, the German influence in Dutch exhibition, the arrival of the first real cinema palaces and the growing professional organisation among Dutch exhibitors and renters altered the Dutch situation for good. Desmet's own abandonment of cinema exhibition and the film trade around 1916 was but the first symptomatic moment of a general development.

Jean Desmet did not abandon the film trade completely when he moved over to property development. The winding down of his buying and selling of films was if anything a gradual process. Certainly, it became an ever more peripheral activity, but he held on to his films for a while for the simple reason that until about 1922 he was still finding occasional customers for his old films. At the beginning of the 1920s, he was also still the owner of three small cinemas, in addition to being a shareholder and supervisory director of the Cinema Royal, which was one of the most important cinemas in Amsterdam in the 1920s and 1930s. During the decade including the First World War, as well as during the 1920s, Desmet tried to sell his films several times. Only in 1938, when part of his collection of publicity materials was lost in a fire at the Cinema Parisien, did he finally get round to making an inventory of his films and arranging for their safe storage. It was the first step in the creation of a film collection: the Desmet Collection.

The Dutch Film World from 1916.The Demise of Desmet as a Motion Picture Exhibitor

On 8 November 1918, three days before the armistice, Desmet placed an advertisement in De Bioscoop-Courant, the popular newspaper De Telegraaf and the Jewish paper Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad. ‘Following the sale of the Cinema Palace at 224 Kalverstraat, the undersigned has decided to sell his other cinemas.’ In October 1918, Desmet, Hamburger, De Hoop and the other shareholders of NV Middenstad sold their holdings in the company, thereby surrendering their interest in both the Cinema Palace cinema and the Cinema Palace distribution operation.