Cannes Film Festival

Cannes
- What a movie it would make
Cannes, France - Any list of the world's most
improbable fort­nights would have to include the Cannes Film Festival. For two
weeks in this little resort town on the Mediterranean, one of the strangest
possible mixtures of humanity gathers to buy, sell, criticize and perhaps even see
hundreds of movies.
Some of the people are very rich, and live on
private yachts anchored offshore. Others are very poor and sleep on the beach.
A great many of the people are very pretty girls who are always somehow deeply
tanned (all over) by the middle of May. A great many more are sallow-faced film
buffs who will never be tanned so long as there is a matinee anywhere in the
world.
Something like 35,000 people started gathering
in Cannes on Friday for this year's festival, which runs through May 27. There
are only about 3,000 seats in the Palais du Cinema, the theater in which the
official entries are screened, but that doesn't mean 9 out of 10 people will be
disappointed in their attempts to see the movies. There are people who come to
Cannes year after year and never see an official entry, because the two
dozen or so entries are such a small part of the festival as a whole.
There's also, very importantly, the Cannes film
marketplace. Every one of the dozen or so private movie theaters in Cannes is
rented around the clock by producers or nations eager to find buyers for their
films. Last year, for example, the Swedes and the Australians got together to
split two weeks at a prestigious theater near the Palais, and papered the town
with posters advertising their products. Where but in Cannes can you see the
premieres of nine Australian movies in six days?
Some of the films in the marketplace are very
serious indeed, and some are el cheapo sleazo sexploitation films. But the
dedicated Cannes-goer is a democrat: I remember last year attending a screening
of Jeanne Moreau's "Lumiere" and then strolling down the street to check out
"Ilsa, Harem-Keeper of the Oil Sheiks". The grade B (and Z) films were
especially big last year because the prestigious Edinburgh Film festival was
going to do a tribute to the exploitation film and so you had the curious
spectacle of Edinburgh and London film intellectu­als, members of the selection
committee, hurrying because they were late for "Fantasex".
Apart from the official entries and the
marketplace, there are several other programs screening simultaneously. There
are, for example, the Critics' Week and the Directors' Fort­night, and the
series called "Air Du Temps," made up of documentaries, and the series called
"Les Yeux Fertiles," or "fertile eyes," made up of films based on plays, and
even the series called "The Composed Past," consisting of films made out of other
films.
Something like 400 films will be shown
altogether and one of the daily rituals is to meet for coffee and croissants in
Le Petit Carlton, a cheap little bar behind the Palais du Cinema, and scan the
daily festival bulletin. It's like a tip sheet for horse players: It lists
everything showing everyday, in and out of competition, and the trick is to
arrange your schedule so that you can see six to eight films before midnight
and have a great lunch and check out the girls on the beach.
I mentioned that some people go to Cannes and
never see an official entry. Other people go to Cannes and never see a movie at
all. That is because (a) they don't have tickets or passes, and are in town for
the excitement, or (b) they're there to be seen, or (c) because they are so
prestigious that it would be beneath their dignity to attend a screening.
In the first category are the fans, who lunge
enthusiastically against the police barricades as Claudia, Cardinaie or Yves
Montand turns up for a premiere (fans don't give a damn for directors and there
is little lunging even for a Polanski or a Truffaut). In the second category
are the stars, or would-be stars (since Silvia Simone, topless, embraced Robert Mitchum at the 1951 festival, there has been an unofficial annual competition
for the Topless Starlet of the Year). And in the third category are the people
who have made their bundle and figure that if you got it, flaunt it.
Last year, for example, Richard Zanuck and David
Brown threw a cold salmon, caviar and champagne buffet for about 200 people on
the Carlton Hotel's private beach. The occasion? Well, Zanuck and Brown had
produced "Jaws", the most profitable movie ever made. "Jaws" had already made
its millions, but the buffet was a way of flaunting it. Or, as Brown, with his
wife Helen Gurley Brown at his side, said, "I thought I'd take my wife out to
lunch."
The classy parties are the ones thrown by people
who've already made their movie fortune this year. The most energetic parties
are the ones thrown by people publicizing how they're gonna make their bundle
next year. Ilya and Alexander Salkind, for example, took over a three-star
restaurant last year to announce that they had signed Marlon Brando to play the
father in "Superman". (This fact had already sort of leaked out, thanks to the
100-foot banner being towed behind the airplane the Salkinds had hired to fly
up and down the beach all day, but never mind, the soup was sublime.)
There are also the just plain crass parties:
Harold Robbins took over a nightclub to announce that he had signed Omar Sharif
to star in "The Pirate", and, in one of the year's most memorable observations,
Rex Reed looked at the buffet (soggy salami sandwiches on white bread) and
said, "Back home, if you don't have enough money to go first class, the least
you can do is say you bring the chips and I'll bring the dip."
I mentioned the Carlton Hotel. No report on
Cannes would be complete without a mention of the Carlton Hotel's bar and
veranda, where all of the deals are signed and all of the people in category
(c), above, gather for their afternoon cocktails. One pot of tea at the Carlton
costs $7, as I learned one year to my horror. There are people lining up to pay
it. Bizarre sights are common: Last year there were three Marilyn Monroe
imitators at the bar at once. One of them was even female.
Not all the bizarre sights are quite as you
might think. I remember the time, for example, when a young man and a large dog
walked into the Carlton bar and both sat down at a booth. The young man ordered
a Campari and soda for himself and champagne for his dog. The maitre 'd,
mortally offended, hurried over to tell the young man he had to be wearing
shoes.
Down the beach a few blocks is the other key
watering place, the American Bar of the Majestic Hotel. Why is it called the
American Bar? I've never been sure, but one year I ordered a glass of white
wine and was told, respectfully but firmly, that no wine at all was served
because it was, after all, the American Bar.
In the midst of the chaos, good films do get
screened at Cannes, and reputations are made, art is served, and the official
jury solemnly ponders the entries. This year's Ameri­can juror is the critic
Pauline Kael, who will perhaps be able to explain the ways in which the jury operates:
Its workings have always been a little unclear.
Last year, for example, the jury chairman was
Tennessee Williams. He called a press conference to denounce the violence in
the films. The front-runner in festival gossip immediately became Eric Rohmer's
"The Maquise of ‘O'", a gentle and civilized film. But no, the winner was "Taxi Driver", the most violent film in competition. You never know. As Groucho Marx
said in 1972, after attending the Cannes festival and being decorated as a
member of the French Institute of Arts and Letters: "Thanks a lot. I always
wanted to be a Cannes-man."