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Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial support. The so-called Third-Worldist anti-colonial cinema did not succeed in resolving the contradiction between cultural promotion, political commitment, and rentability, and was soon eclipsed either by entirely mainstream-oriented cinema or by the rather anti-authoritarian, deconstructive, and stylistically innovative, yet regionally marginalized, cinéma d'auteur. Nonetheless, mainstream as well as individualist cinema was able to convey elements of native art and culture, and became actively involved in the creation of specific national or cultural identities. Although the medium became part of a mass-mediated culture and functioned as a means of mass entertainment, commercialism, the obligation to rentability, and competition with Western products did not result in a complete imitation of Western cinema, but initiated the reformation of the imported film language according to the needs of local audiences.

The fall of the Third Reich ended the pervasive distortions of a heroic past and brought about a strong reaction against such manipulation. This chapter shows that the myth of Arminius underwent a radical reevaluation. In Western Europe, film portrayals of Romans and Germans told action stories without overt political sermonizing, as in the Italian-German Il massacro della foresta nera (1967, about Arminius) and the German Ein Kampf um Rom (1968–69, about the fall of Rome). All this was in conscious reaction to patriotic nineteenth-century German literature and Nazi extremism. By contrast, the conflicts between Romans and Eastern European tribes whom the Romans either conquered or attempted to conquer were the subject of Communist Bloc films. In the Romanian epics Dacii (1967) and Columna (1968), ancient liberators and resisters were portrayed as precursors of Socialist heroes.