Film is capital intensive, in the economic sense. The making of a movie involves individual human capital, social capital, natural capital, manufactured capital, and financial capital. Within the human capital, we can include intellectual / knowledge capital, since to work on a film one likely had to receive training (at some cost of time, effort, and money). Economists study these six (or sometimes seven) forms of capital and how groups of people decide to invest their capital. For many reasons, our culture has determined the capital costs of making films is a worthy expense.
Yet, the film industry was and is often associated with “the left” because of its artistic qualities. Cinema is art, I believe, but it isn’t like other arts. You need more than a pencil and paper or a used musical instrument. It takes thousands of dollars to make the least expensive hour-long work. It takes an army of people to make a feature film, along with a massive amount of technology.
Governments of all manner have used film directly or attempted to guide the “free market” in ways favorable to their ideologies. This always consumes capital. Governments from across the political spectrum are united by a conviction that media can and should promote the “right” values through cinema and television.
Authoritarian governments have understood the power of film. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia… each understood film as an emotionally powerful form of art and communication. There’s a reason Moscow invested heavily in film. You cannot study film without the Moscow filmmakers: they helped turn film into an academic discipline.
Producing content for cinema and television requires human (lots of it), social, natural, manufactured, and financial. In every system of production, regardless of ideology, it takes people, information (knowledge and skills), machines, natural resources (space, light, energy), and some sort of funding allocation to make a movie.
The capital dedicated to a film, or any primarily “entertainment” medium, is allocated from other places in the economy. In most of the world, including throughout Europe, film is among the (partially) publicly financed and supported arts. Yet even in an ideal world, someone would ask why a film receives support over and instead of better nutrition, education, housing, healthcare, and so on. Prioritizing film with public monies, people, spaces, or other resources means something else doesn’t receive that capital.
When we study film, we might ask why it is the capital-intensive pursuit of many non-capitalists. This question is not a game, either. Films require the best in technology. Bright people. It takes resources that could, in theory, be applied to other tasks a culture could consider more valuable than entertainment. Why do we make art that costs $100 million when that same money could help thousands of people?
Yes, I make movies and write stage plays. Is that the best, the most economical, use of my skills and resources? That’s a philosophical question those of us in the arts often avoid. Stating that we “need” the arts as humans seems insufficient, an answer we embrace though the reasoning behind it should be evaluated.