...and Ron Holloway Reminisces on the occasion of his 40th Festival de Cannes.
By Ron Holloway Everybody has his or her own memories of the Cannes film festival. My own first memories of Cannes were of a broken festival. In 1968, after the students had stormed the Sorbonne in Paris, their contagious revolutionary spirit spilled over onto the Croisette. Smack in the middle of the festival, the projectionists joined the kids on the street - and the 21st Festival de Cannes was history. Looking back, there was so much excitement at the time that I could have filled a book with vivid memories - the fist of Jean-Luc Godard raised above the crowd during a meeting of French filmmakers and foreign guests; alongside Godard, the quieter yet emphatic François Truffaut; a crowd featuring a jovial Orson Welles puffing on his cigar - and little Geraldine Chaplin tugging at the curtain of the old Palais des Festivals to officially close the event. Another memory was the meandering conversations with Variety staff, particularly Gene Moskowitz of Paris and Hank Werba of Rome, who would wax eloquent with regard to issues of the day, including the change of the festival dates from September in 1949 to May in 1951. That shift on the calendar schedule separated Cannes permanently from Venice, but it also took so much planning that the 1950 festival had to be dropped altogether. Favre le Bret and the Starlets
Robert Favre le Bret, the délégué général at Cannes from 1952 to 1972 (who also ran the Paris Opera in the off-season), loved the pomp and circumstance of the Cannes show. Like any good card player with a worthy hand, he went for broke. Glamour and parties. Yachts anchored in the bay and... Gina Lollobrigida. 1952 was also the year that Orson Welles won the Golden Palm for Othello - the Moroccan national anthem was played to celebrate the occasion because no one knew the exact production country of origin. No matter. Welles was hosted by Alexander Korda on his yacht in the bay, with Graham Greene along for good company. Gene Moskowitz told a story about Robert Favre le Bret that I find emblematic of most major international film festivals. It seems the délégué général had an incurable habit of sitting in at final jury meetings - an unnecessary move if intended to impose influence, for, although he had already given the president of the jury two votes, the délégué général retained the power of veto as a last resort. To my knowledge, the veto was never exercised by le Bret, who always delivered a respected jury president. Jean Cocteau, a personal friend, served as jury president in 1953, 1954 and 1957. Le Bret's other, less obvious, wildcard was a ploy to assure an American winner among one or other of the lesser Palm Awards. However, when the trades estimated in the late 1950s that the Palme d'Or was worth at least a million dollars in advertising, the Hollywood studios came calling - and Cannes realized its potential as the natural springboard for American mainstream fare across Europe. Add to this the presence of les starlettes - Jean Moreau and Brigitte Bardot, Michèle Morgan and Anouk Aimée, Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Derléac (as well as a Miss Cannes bikini competition) - and you have the Favre le Bret formula in a nutshell. The French New Wave
In the 1960s, the advent of the nouvelle vague changed everything. François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda, and Louis Malle and Claude Chabrol played along with le Bret for a while. After all, the auteur directors like Luis Buñuel and Luchino Visconti, Orson Welles and Michelangelo Antonioni had effectively used Cannes to leverage international co-production deals and worldwide distribution. But since le Bret was not willing to share the limelight with the nouvelle vague upstarts, a blowup at the 1968 Cannes festival was inevitable. In 1969, the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (1969) - aka Directors' Fortnight - joined with the previously established Semaine de la Critique (founded in 1962) - aka International Week of the Critics - to challenge the prestige rights of the official program in the Palais. A new era was indeed dawning. And in came Maurice Bessy. Maurice Bessy Innovations
A wildcat who spent as much time penning cinema pamphlets as administrating the sprawling film festival, Maurice Bessy delighted in launching one non-competitive section after another. His hope was to stem the tide of the radicals in the Directors Fortnight and the Week of the Critics by introducing the out-of-competition Les Yeux Fertiles (The Creative Eye, for independent features) in 1975, followed by L'Air du Temps (The Pulse of the Times, for documentaries) in 1976, and Le Passé Composé (Documenting the Past, for restored archival prints) in 1977. Another Maurice Bessy innovation was Perspectives du Cinéma Français (Perspectives of French Cinema), a showcase of new French productions for those directors without an avenue to the other sections. Although Bessy's tenure was a relatively short six years, he can be credited with opening the doors to a Cannes festival that showcased a grab-bag of styles and themes by filmmakers from around the world. Critics have also praised Maurice Bessy for exposing the pitfalls of the Le Bret years. No more fiddle-faddle over entries and awards. "I could no longer just blindly accept each country's entries," Bessy stated emphatically in the French press. "But to demand that the selections be made by us was a hard battle." Not only did his "open door" policy lead to a flood of films for new programming sections and the burgeoning film market, but overnight some 30,000 film professionals descended on the Croisette to party and barter. Maurice Bessy also took a notable liking to "Hollywood Mavericks," including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, Steven Spielberg and Robert Altman (to counteract pressure from the American Studios?). Coppola's The Conversation was awarded the Golden Palm in 1974, followed by Scorsese's Taxi Driver in 1976 (with Tennesee Williams as jury president). Some say Bessy's stance to protect and promote cinematic art at all costs led to his downfall, others say it was his irascible and sometimes fiery temperament. In any case, a likeable Express critic, Gilles Jacob, was poised for the post. Gilles Jacob Diplomacy
For a quarter century, Gilles Jacob did his utmost to protect the image of the festival by promoting its independence, safeguarding the integrity of his selection committee and trumpeting the freedom of his international jury. His first move was to group the innovations begun by his predecessor together under a new Cannes rubric: Un Certain Regard (A Certain Look), founded in 1978 and now in its third decade as a backup to the programme officiel. That same year, he also launched the Caméra d'Or competition to honor directors making their debut features. As Cannes expanded into le grand festival du film, more additions surfaced to meet the challenge of the times. A brand new Palais des Festivals was erected on the former site of Casino Municipale (where the first screenings had taken place in 1946) and the "bunker" became less important than its "staircase" where Les Marches, a fashion show to rival the world's best, happens nightly. The Marché du Film, aka Cannes Film Market, was given a new home in the Riviera complex behind the Palais. This, in turn, was augmented by the spreading Village International, national pavilions that now stretch far down the beach front. As cinema approached its centennial as an art form, innovative sidebars were added to the Cannes festival: Cinéfondation (shorts by young talent), Cannes Classics (restored prints and films about films), Tous les Cinémas du Monde (national showcases), L'Atélier du Festival (film campus), Les Leçons (film seminars), Cinéma de la Plage (Beach Projections), La Journée de l'Europe (European Day for Cultural Ministers) and Exposition (documentation on cinema). One needn't look far for evidence of Gilles Jacob as the master diplomat. It was Jacob who recognized immediately the importance of Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron (Poland), the 1981 Palme d'Or winner that saluted the Solidarnosz movement - a decision that may well have prompted the imposition of martial law in Poland later that year. Jacob also shifted the playing date of Yilmaz Güney's story-boarded Yol (Turkey) to the front of the 1982 festival schedule, thus paving the way for a Palme d'Or to honor the imprisoned director despite the loud protests of the Turkish government. And, to my knowledge, Gilles Jacob was also the first film festival director to state openly that "film art cannot be boycotted" under any political circumstances. This strong belief opened the door in the Cannes competition to suppressed Iranian filmmakers - and a Palme d'Or for Abbas Kiarostami's The Taste of Cherries in 1997. Gilles Jacob often stood alone among his peers for these and other milestone decisions in the history of the Cannes festival, decisions that deserve the respect of critics and the thanks of film professionals. Thierry Frémaux
In 2004, the reins of the délégué général were officially handed on to Thierry Frémaux, while Gilles Jacob moved up to become festival president. The only outstanding matter of business: a Cannes Museum, an all-year-round festival of memories for cineastes and festivaliers. Bienvenu! | 
