Oooh, this is turning into a hot potato...I think you can't dismiss schools and collectives as a principally French thing. What about the Old and New German Schools in 19th century classical music (i.e. Brahms vs Wagner) or New German Cinema. What about the Late Romantic literary movement in Germany - Mann etc.

And of course there are individuals in each country - nobody ever made films quite like Jean Vigo for instance - even Jacques Demy had his own style.

I'm not trying to start an argument (I'm probably not qualified) but just trying to throw a spanner in the works.

By the by, I don't know a great deal about Italian visual art, but Italian cinema is largely wasted on me, and much Italian music seems to me too superficial (even Scarlatti and Verdi, whom among others I admire, focus on the surface of the product more than composers from other countries - or is this just another generalisation? Answers on a postcard.).