This weeks issue is thanks to my good friend and ex-colleague Paul Gratton, who has attended the Cannes Film Festival regularly for many many years.

My first Cannes Film Festival was in 1980. It suddenly dawned on me
this year, as Cannes was celebrating its 60th anniversary, that even though I still feel like a Cannes newbie, I’ve actually been attending for about half its lifespan, and that makes me one of the old granddaddies at the festival. Most of the attendees at this year’s filmic rendez-vous by the sea have probably been coming for many fewer years than I have. And so I adopted a certain nostalgic look at the festival this year and thought of how much the physical set-up and the vibe have changed over the last three decades.

The Grand Palais, for example (the main theatrical venue for films in competition) was originally more centrally located on the Croisette than it is now, sitting on the ground where the Noga Hilton now rests. It was the scene of many a frenzied world premiere, including Apocalypse Now, and Chariots of Fire, which was booed by the French at a gala screening during my first year. The market screenings at Cannes were far more numerous and important then, because there was no American Film Market and the video boom was just about to begin.

Screenings were scattered all over the city and many old and mouldy local movie houses were showing porn for 50 weeks out of the year, and making most of their profits renting out their old theatres to market screenings for two weeks in May. They’d start at 8.30 in the morning and grind them out back to back until 2 am the next morning. In fact I saw 56 movies in their entirety my first year at Cannes, mostly by neglecting sleep and regular meals. Today, the market is much smaller, and old movie houses like the Ambassades are long gone. Only three remain, all within a short walking distance of each other, with all three of them showing the same movies when the festival isn’t on.

Hardcore porn is no longer screened in the market, and even the licentious sellers’ booths that used to overrun the basement at the Palais have now been relegated to off-campus yachts.

Hungarian porn stars frolicking on the beach during the 1995 "Hot d’Or Festival,"
which runs parallel to the Film Festival.

The market is much less about buying unsung gems, and much more about exchanging scripts and prebuying and financing before production starts. Markets have become opportunities to meet and greet the people you do business with all year long, and much less about acquisitions. Still, the films in competition, perhaps because they represent a fairly elitist and still auteur-driven view of cinema as an essential art form, often showcase movies that have not yet secured North American distribution. It still boggles my mind that an obscure Romanian film about abortion can arrive unsung at the festival, get a gala screening on Europe’s largest indoor screen in front of 2,400 black-tie clad film dignitaries, win a Palme d’Or and still might never get seen in North America outside of a few festival slots. At times, Cannes feels like an alternate universe, especially when compared to your local cookie-cutter multiplex that is showing the latest comic book sequel on ten screens starting every fifteen minutes.

The biggest change of course has been the transformation of the presence of the American majors at the festival. They supply the stars, which feeds the press, which ensures worldwide coverage for the fest. The festival is essentially used as a European or worldwide junket opportunity as films like Michael Moore’s Sicko or Ocean’s Thirteen prepare for their upcoming theatrical releases. Of course that means that celebrities are no longer nearly as accessible as they once were 30 years ago Chatting with Divine at the world premiere of Polyester, for example, is probably the sort of casual access that would rarely occur today. Even the parties have cordoned off VIP sections, and stars and directors are surrounded by handlers and bodyguards. The same inevitably occurs at every successful festival I suppose. How many people still wax nostagic for a Toronto Film Festival where you could walk into any screening just by flashing a gold corporate sponsor badge? Those days are long gone.

The one thing that hasn’t changed much is that Cannes remains the pre-eminent film festival in the world for auteur driven art films and for the business of buying and selling international film product. The markets may have changed and so have the players and maybe even the delivery platforms, but Cannes remains the quuintessential film festival against which all other pretenders must continue to measure themselves.

And one other thing has not changed. The organizers still change the rules of access and how to get tickets just about every year, especially following a year in which the system seems to have worked. The French seem to have a deep-rooted need to fix any system that appears to be working. It’s an endearing national trait. Cannes is a festival that thrives on chaos. And it guarantees that you’ll continue to feel like a neophyte, even if it’s you’re thirtieth year doing the Cannes Cannes.

Movie Review:

The Conformist

Written and Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci — Universal Pictures 1946
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant and Dominique Sanda

This brilliantly realized movie is a literal feast for the eyes as virtually each frame is a composition of color and shape that dazzles! It tells the story of Marcello (Trintignant), a lost soul, presumably the result of an attempted homosexual rape as a child, who is obsessed with the notion of normalcy and conformity. Marcello desperately wants to fit in, and what he wants to fit into is the society of fascist Italy of 1936.

Marcello awaits the pickup car to perform the hit.

The story is told in a discontinuous, checkerboard style with the structural thrust being a drive through snowy urban and country landscapes to the murderous ambush of a dissident intellectual who also happens to be a former professor of Marcello’s. Marcello is "proving himself" to the fascist, secret police by planning the assassination and betrayal of his former mentor – and the professor’s young wife, Anna (Sanda) as it turns out – while on his honeymoon in Paris with his rather stupid and frivolous, "petit bourgeois" wife!

In many ways, "The Conformist" is a curious movie with a number of symbolic anomalies or puzzles that are disconcerting. As Vincent Canby wrote in the N.Y. Times when the film appeared in 1970, "There are excesses in the film, but they are balanced by scenes of such unusual beauty and vitality that I couldn’t care less."

Anna and Guilia dance the tango.

And for what it’s worth I couldn’t agree more. I watched "The Conformist" again two evenings ago and was again mesmerized by its grace and radiance. Bertolucci is a wonderful director and the performances by Trintignant and Sanda are superb – as is that of the entire cast. There is a scene in a ballet studio where Anna (a particularly exquisite Dominique Sanda) has just completed a class of instruction for young girls. When the studio has emptied of its so innocent students, Anna turns to Marcello, the deadly representative of all that threatens art and its concomitant spirituality and, dressed in a leotard, uncovers herself to the waist. At this point, the luminous and vulnerable Anna approaches Marcello in her nakedness and says, very softly; "Please don’t hurt us.

Marcello pays Anna a surprise visit at her studio.

Once again my eyes filled with tears as I stared in awe and wonder at this vulnerable and beautiful woman, representing art, individual expression and spiritual communion who is about to be murdered, along with her husband, in a particularly disturbing scene set in a snowy, fog-shrouded, great forest at the film’s conclusion. There are many such scenes of uncommon power throughout "The Conformist.

The fascist assasins hunt down Anna, the Professor’s wife.

When screening the film with a friend of mine some time ago, she insisted on pausing on single frames which were of such breathtaking beauty that she wanted to paint them!

Another aspect of this film which is also stunning is the acute and almost surreal use of wardrobe and sets to invoke not only a sense of the period but to capture the essence of that period.

So "The Conformist" is, to my mind, a masterpiece! I never tire of watching it – even in part.  It’s a perfect companion piece for any discussion of the Cannes Film Festival.