This is In response to bdk160's August message which I've only just seen. Yesterday I was thinking about how wonderful American films were during Hollywood's "Golden Age" and it struck me that in fact every one of the great filmmakers from Old Hollywood were indeed European born!  Certainly their sensibilities were infused with their "foreign" backgrounds and cultures.  I was trying to rationalize including favorite "Hollywood" filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock (British) and William Wyler (German). Maybe, as some of the above messages suggest, the distinction is a false one.   There are only good films and bad films.  (It just happens that most of the bad ones come out of contemporary  Hollywood!)