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Cannes Film Festival
[Film Technology]
Cannes, Festival de, the most prestigious film festival in the world. A purely political
agenda dictated the creation of the Cannes Film Festival: it was conceived in
France at the end of 1938 as a reaction to the Venice Mostra, which had been established by Benito Mussolini in the early 1930s as a platform
for fascist propaganda. World War II hostilities intervened, however, and the
first Festival was not held until 1946, when Philippe Erlanger’s project was
finally accepted by the French government, Cannes town authorities, and cinema
representatives. Internationalism and
post-war optimism were to characterize the first Festival; the organizers
placed less emphasis on competition than on mutual stimulation between national
productions. The Lost Weekend by Billy Wilder won the Grand Prix, but Roma,
Città Aperta (1945; Rome, Open City) by Roberto Rossellini was
received unfavourably by most critics. The Festival soon acquired its
reputation as a professional, business-orientated, fashionable event. The
jury’s selection criteria were predominantly commercial, and political concerns
were avoided, except in 1956, when Nuit et Brouillard (1955; Night
and Fog) by Alain Resnais, an account of Auschwitz, almost provoked a
diplomatic scandal. The first criticism of the Festival was heard in the same
year, when François Truffaut exposed its political intrigues and promotional
deals, and predicted its commercial demise. The Festival survived, however, and
Truffaut was himself rewarded for Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959; The
Four Hundred Blows). The political climate of Paris in May 1968 led to the
Festival being cancelled that year, and resulted in the establishment of the Société des Réalisateurs de Film. Despite its ever-present
financial interests and political overtones, the Cannes Film Festival remains
an essential showcase for international cinema. Recipients of the Palme d’Or
(Golden Palm) award include La Dolce Vita (1960, Federico Fellini), Il
Gattopardo (1963; The Leopard, Luchino Visconti), Blow Up
(1966, Michelangelo Antonioni), The Go-Between (1971, Joseph Losey), Taxi
Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese), Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders), sex,
lies and videotape (1989, Steven Soderbergh), The Piano (1993, Jane
Campion), Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino), and Secrets and
Lies (1996, Mike Leigh).
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