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Cannes, queen of the circuit
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Event At 60, this mega film festival draws the glitterati, media, visitors, fans, cineastes to two weeks of movie-mania. Randor Guy
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Photos: AFP
The winners: Celebrities at the closing ceremony.
“The [Cannes] Festival is an apolitical no-man’s land, a microcosm of what the world would be like if people could contact each other directly and speak the same language,” said famed French poet, painter and filmmake
r, Jean Cocteau.
Prestigious, glitzy and the much-awaited Cannes Film Festival, which turns 60 this year, is the queen of the circuit. A significant contribution of Cannes is to bring to the world non-English filmmakers whose works are unknown outside their own countries. These include celebrated luminaries like Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Pietro Germi and Ingmar Bergman.
In the mid-1930s, when Mussolini’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazis began to interfere and play a decisive role in selection of movies for the famed Venice Film Festival, it was decided to create an alternative international cinematographic festival in Cannes, chosen for its sunshine, enchanting setting and its tantalising beaches. Apart from 1948 and 1950 when lack of funds led to the cancellation of the event, the Festival has taken place each and every year, at first in September, then in May (as of 1951), running approximately for two weeks.
Changing aim
In the beginning, the festival was a tourist and social event rather than a film forum for competition, since nearly every film screened walked off with a prize! Over the years, the increase in participants and the new economic stakes morphed its objectives.
Today this annual event draws over 4,000 journalists representing 1,600 media companies, and 30,000 visitors. In May 2006, Hollywood Reporter acknowledged that Cannes is the “granddaddy of all film festivals” (although
the oldest film festival, which began in 1932, is the Venice Film Festival).
From 1946 to 1954, the award known as ‘the Grand Prix’ (’Grand Prize’) was given to outstanding films such as ‘The Lost Weekend’ (Billy Wilder), ‘Brief Encounter’ (David Lean), ‘Rome, Open City’ (Roberto Rossellini), ‘The Third Man’ (Carol Reed), ‘Miracle in Milan’ (Vittorio De Sica), ‘The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice’ (Orson Welles) and ‘The Wages of Fear’ (Henri-Georges Clouzot). The only Indian filmmaker to win the Grand Prix was Chetan Anand for ‘Neecha Nagar’ (1946). In 1954, the Festival Board invited several jewellers to submit designs for a new award named Palme d’Or or the Golden Palm.
The top prize, the Palme d’ Or.
In 1955 the first Palme d’Or was given to Delbert Mann for his film ‘Marty’ Some prominent winners of the Palme d’Or are ‘Friendly Persuasion’ (William Wyler), ‘The Cranes Are Flying’ (Mikhail Kalatozov), ‘La dolce vita’ (Federico Fellini), ‘Viridiana’ (Luis Buñuel), and ‘The Leopard’ (Luchino Visconti).
The Grand Prix Award was re-introduced from 1964 (till 1974), and the prominent winners include ‘Blowup’ (Michelangelo Antonioni), ‘If’ (Lindsay Anderson), ‘M*A*S*H’ (Robert Altman), ‘The Go-Between’ (Joseph Losey) and ‘The Conversation’ (Francis Ford Coppola).
In 1975, the Palme d’Or’ took over again and continues to be awarded to this day. Some noted winners are ‘Taxi Driver’ (Martin Scorsese), ‘Apocalypse Now’ (Francis Ford Coppola), ‘Kagemusha’ (Akira Kurosawa), ‘Sex, lies, and videotape’ (Steven Soderbergh) and ‘Pulp Fiction’ (Quentin Tarantino).
Apart from the films and awards, the other attraction is the celebrities
Clint Eastwood sums it up thus, “the climate is so odd, a whorehouse of selling, and intense Cinemania of searching for the gem, the one that is going to knock every one off their feet….There is no place like Cannes.” That says it all.
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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