In France 80% of the French films are about French cinema. We used to have great comedies because of some great comedians like De Funès, Bourvil and to a lesser extent Coluche (who was the most popular stand up comedian in the 70s and 80s, as a sort of proletarian clown, and proved to be a good dramatic actor in Tchao Pantin). But recently the only brilliant comic actor we have is Dujardin - his OSS117 is just over the top.
TV series used to be flat, dull and boring. Only recently there's been real creativity with Engrenages (Spiral).
The thing with anglophone cinema is that the anglophone world has had Shakespeare. When sound happened to cinema, Hollywood just mixed Shakespeare with Wagner to produce the greatest shows on celluloid. France only had a great comedy playwright, Molière. But our classic dramatic authors, Racine and Corneille, are terribly boring. Of course there are Hugo, Marivaux, etc. but nobody that can incarnate a whole culture with his sole name like old Billy.
Then with WW2 and the Nazi invasion of Europe, great artists and producers, either Jewish or antifascist by conviction, like Thomas Mann for example, moved to safer countries like Britain and the USA, thus concentrating the best of European culture from every country in the English language that, combined with the sympathy earned during the war, made it the de facto lingua franca until today.
Speaking of Bresson, he has influenced American cinema through Paul Schrader's essay and his own work as writer in films like Taxi Driver that uses many narrative techniques invented by Bresson.
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