Should you judge the quality of a film based on how many people have been to see it? It’s the type of argument you would expect to hear in the context of the “culture war”; but is it what you would expect to hear from French culture warriors? From a country that uses language quotas to maintain its musicians on broadcast media, has fought to promote its language abroad and has always seen itself as a place that radiates art outwards? After all, this is a country that put on an opera for the 2024 Olympic closing ceremony.

Enter Sébastien Chenu, vice-president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN). Chenu advanced the box-office success argument as a reason for his party’s proposal to eliminate, Doge-style, France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC) – the public body that subsidises almost every nook and cranny of the country’s heavy-hitting film industry. Let the market take over? Quality as a derivative of quantity? If the RN is perfectly happy to surrender Audiard for Avengers 18 (or whatever), why not apply the logic elsewhere as well?

Out would go subsidies to artisanal boulangeries and in with McDo (which, after all, can boast “billions and billions served”). Why bother stipulating a certain percentage of French music on the radio when American labels can easily take over? And, while we’re at it, why not recuperate the funding going to all the Institut Français centres around the world that promote the French language in the face of the numerical superiority of English?

Let’s be clear, the arts and culture subsidies at hand are relatively small – but have outsize impact. The CNC’s €850m in annual subsidies to French cinema amount to about €12.50 per person – or roughly one movie ticket a year for each of France’s 67 million citizens. For that, France – the birthplace of........

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