THE ACCEPTANCE of these films on the modern temperament by persons of any race, despite the fact that their race may not be in these films, is itself an expression and manifestation of the modern temperament. What each viewer is being asked to receive or identify with is not the skin colour, hair texture, or even the geographical or ethnic specification in these films, but above all, the mentality, the attitude and self-conscious lifestyle of characters.
For example, even in the leading African films of today, masterpieces like 1987’s ‘YEELEN’ (Brightness), directed by Souleymane Cisse of Mali, or 1992’s ‘GITO THE UNGRATEFUL’, directed by Leonce Ngabo of Burundi (just two of many African cinematic classics), we are faced with characters who struggle to stay together as a small family unit; characters who reject attitudes of bondage and acts of sorcery harmful towards others, also the schemes of an egotistical young man who believes he is smarter than everyone else.
We can decide that the distinctly beautiful, elemental tropical African landscape of both these films is more important than the film’s characters, or events. But neither would it be unimportant to say that despite this, these films are relevant to any viewer, of any race, who is able to see the egalitarian human value in these characterizations.
Indeed, ‘YEELEN’ is considered not just an outstanding African film, but an outstanding film of the 20th Century, period;  precisely because it also symbolizes the modern artistic temperament by grafting unto an antique African art object the projected magical ‘light’ of an inserted mineral prismatic stone, which signifies the actual light of a film projector as a paradigm of the film’s shared belief in a  new positive modern power of contemporary cinema, which magically overcomes the negative ‘darkness’ of sorcery at the film’s conclusion.
The multiracial, multicultural patronage of these films is simply the inevitable human background no one can escape; but the mentality, attitude, and lifestyles they encounter in these essential films of the modern temperament is a modern identity in the making, not an identity already made by the past, since such a natural temporal foundation is limited by time, which advances with increased knowledge and its ability to transform humans.
In any case, the international artists who make these films of the modern temperament, and in their own special way grasping, projecting, and even resolving common human problems via the art of films are not concerned with using film to reflect specific problems limited to the particular race and culture from which they naturally came or inherited.
It is the common equalizing values peculiar to the modern temperament which elect films to that essential role representing such an important social evolution.
What guarantees the continued international relevance of essential Hollywood films of the modern temperament is that they are forerunners and artistic models which expose and criticize problems which emerge, first, in developed societies and environments, before inevitably emerging elsewhere in later developing societies.
The personal and social nature of these problems become globally common because they are generated by the gap between the rural and the urban; between the lesser and higher educated; between the naïve and the experienced, of any country. 
A good example of such a film is John Schlesinger’s ‘MIDNIGHT COWBOY’ of 1969, from a good American novel by James Leo Herlily. It is the story of Joe, a Texan country boy who idolizes the slick modern cowboy stud’s amorality acted by Paul Newman role in ‘HUD’. Joe is unforgettably played by Jon Voight in this his first prominent role in an outstanding acting career.
Joe comes to New York City, inseparable from his transistor radio (a popular gadget of the time), intending to use his attractive physique and good looks to live without working by being a stud to a variety of materially independent, sexually active New York women. Joe does get to service a number of them, but he is no match for their skilful, urban, big-city independence, which consumes and discards him.
Enter Ratso, a short, streetwise derelict New York pickpocket and pimp, secretly dying of consumption. Ratso is brilliantly played by Dustin Hoffman, the lead star of this film, in this his second profound screen role after ‘THE GRADUATE’, which would continue to rocket him from previous years of poverty as a serious dedicated actor, to indelible professional status and success.
Ratso becomes Joe’s only friend in New York’s hectic urban environment of daily hustling, scheming, and getting by on one’s wits, because the impersonal commercial modern urban environment can only be mastered by a mental power, whether negative or positive, towards others, and Joe’s sole corporeal rural identity becomes ineffective, because it is not sufficiently rooted in the modern temperament.
‘MIDNIGHT COWBOY’ became an important Hollywood classic because it excitingly exposed two major points relevant beyond North American society. One, is the vulnerable effect of a material fast-paced social environment on those moving to it from a rustic, less urban environment; this is comparable to the disruptive civic and social problems which emerge in ‘Third World’ developing nations when an exodus from traditional styles of making a living in the countryside expose people to the desperation of survival in cities necessitating an educated and appropriately cultured modern temperament.
Two: ‘Midnight Cowboy’ achieved subtle cult status as a film which reveals one process of going ‘gay’, where an initial male fantasy of being a ‘stud’ is defeated by fickle, transient female partners, and the naïve male can only find satisfying comfort in sympathetic male companionship. Joe is a victim of both urban metropolitan ‘fast-lane’ life, and an un-weaned, inexperienced sexual male identity.
A similar scenario occurs in ‘BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S’ of 1961, the zesty, slightly changed Blake Edwards film of Truman Capote’s stylishly written novella of 85 pages. Behind all the glamorous attractions Miss  Holly Golightly pursues in New York is the submerged social theme of a teenage runaway bride from distant, quaint, rural ‘backwoods’ customs.
What is driving her story, told by a struggling creative writer who shares her apartment building in NYC, is her delightful self-taught learning, her captivating personality representing a questing modern temperament. But neither this or her womanly charms supply the necessary wisdom to steer her clear of the pitfalls of a pampered life dependent on various shady ‘sugar-daddy’ suitors who deceive, abandon, and fail her repeatedly.
Here is a novel and film whose leading female character, beautifully acted by a young Audrey Hepburn, despite her metropolitan lifestyle, finds a deep basic relevance to millions of young people today outside the USA, who are experiencing the same transition from an unsophisticated past, to a lifestyle based on the eclectic modern temperament.
In 1967, ‘IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT’ created a whole new focus on the meaning and implication of the non-white (specifically the black individual in this film) as an educated professional whose role expresses the modern temperament. Sidney Poitier is the dapper big-city black detective accidentally stranded at the train station of a small rural Southern US town, where the discovered murder of a white man stereotypically casts suspicion on this well-dressed black stranger with a lot of money in his wallet.
HE is not supposed to be so well-dressed and un-broke. Today, the prevalence of black detectives in numerous TV programmes has made such a character without edge, normal and acceptable. But the originality of ‘IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT’ remains significant and profound, because of Poitier’s ability to singularly represent the peculiar progressive participation of traditionally non-white, or non-western  professional involvement in the modern temperament, and whose jobs call for an impartial moral and just approach to others.
Poitier grasps this point by his ability to make us feel how totally humane and
professional he must be, since his job is to fairly solve the murder of someone of the race that both in the past and present often victimizes and belittles him. His role becomes a creative moral and professional standard for others placed in the same position in relation to those of another race, or ethnic background.
Writers and artists are faced with the same creative responsibility if their works are to transcend an antagonistic reactionary backlash for historical wrongs personally felt. This exemplary transcendence of Man’s perpetual folly is a major value which has made certain types of fiction, poetry, film, visual art, music, and theatre, harbingers of the best civilized qualities of the modern temperament.
It is perhaps significant that the director of ‘IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT’ is a Canadian, Norman Jewison, whose distance from the harsh historical experiences of the Afro-American projected a fresh, detached and daring egalitarian approach to this cultural subject of the modern temperament in a non-white character.
‘WEST SIDE STORY’ of 1961, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, remains one of the greatest youth culture films ever to come out of Hollywood filmmaking. It is a film almost three hours long, with not one boring or uninteresting moment, all the old tribal/racial divisions and differences between old and new immigrants to America become the signifier and solution to similar problems anywhere.
What happens when two individuals from two rival ethnic groups fall romantically in love? ‘WEST SIDE STORY’ carries this topic beyond the familiar prohibitions of the Romeo and Juliette story into a social area where the modern temperament is also expressed by the defiant anti-violent opposition of interracial romantic love to racial group dictates and dominance.
Films like these owe their existence once again to Jewish-American Hollywood producers like the outstanding Walter Mirisch and Joseph. E. Levine, and Italians like Carlo Ponti and Dino DeLaurentiis.
In balanced national development, which is necessary to absorb the obscure shocks produced by changes introduced to familiar human history by the progressive modern temperament, such problematic and critical films act as paradigms working alongside the materialistic practicality of official developmental programmes and strategies, but defusing the un-thought of negative effects of such necessary social changes, which it is the special artistic role and merit of these essential films to deconstruct with their content and style.