1962 — The 15th Cannes Film Festival
Notable Competition Titles: “Advise & Consent” (Otto Preminger); “Cleo From 5 To 7” (Agnes Varda); “The Exterminating Angel” (Luis Buñuel); “L’Eclisse” (Michelangelo Antonioni); “The Innocents” (Jack Clayton); “The Trial Of Joan Of Arc” (Robert Bresson); “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (Sidney Lumet); “A Taste Of Honey” (Tony Richardson); “Divorce Italian Style” (Pietro Germi); “Mondo Cane” (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi)
With such a dazzling array of U.S. and European auteurs in the selection, it’s somewhat surprising to note that the Palme d’Or in 1962 went, for the first and so far only time, to a Brazilian film that time has largely forgotten: “Keeper of Promises” by Anselmo Duarte. Perhaps the story of a simple man’s quest to carry a cross to a priest in thanks to the Lord for saving his donkey seemed refreshing for its austerity in a year when the provocateurs who started the whole “Mondo” craze for exploitation documentaries ruffled feathers with their bawdy and explicit (and totally unmissable) “Mondo Cane,” and when the never-knowingly-uncontroversial Luis Buñuel was welcomed back into the competition fold the very year after his 1961 Palme d’Or-winner “Viridiana” had been banned by the Catholic Church. “The Exterminating Angel” would prove just as scandalous — perhaps another win would have brought on papal apoplexy.
Still, it does seem a bit strange that with so many more striking films in competition — from Antonioni’s glimmering ode to disaffection “L’Eclisse” (you can read about it in our Antonioni Essentials), to Robert Bresson’s economical, 61-minute “The Trial Of Joan Of Arc” which both shared second prize (here’s our Bresson Retrospective), to Preminger’s flashy, starry “Advise & Consent” to Jack Clayton’s sublime and chilling “The Innocents” with Deborah Kerr, the jury, which included François Truffaut that year, went for such a relatively unheralded film. Of course, if righting the wrongs of history were my business, the Palme would have gone to Agnes Varda’s unimpeachable and completely essential “Cleo From 5 To 7.” As it was, the festival would have to wait another 31 years before a female director would win Cannes’ top award — and Jane Campion remains the only woman to have managed that feat (for 1993’s “The Piano“).
1974 — The 27th Cannes Film Festival
Notable Competition Titles: “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); “Thieves Like Us” (Robert Altman); “The Sugarland Express” (Steven Spielberg); “Arabian Nights” (Pier Paolo Pasolini); “The Conversation” (Francis Ford Coppola); “The Last Detail” (Hal Ashby)
For once, we’ve no axe to grind with the Jury, including president René Clair, and jurors Monica Vitti and Alexander Walker, as we probably would have chosen Francis Ford Coppola’s brilliantly understated “The Conversation” for the Palme, too, unless we’d been tempted by the jerky brilliance of Fassbinder’s Sirkian melodrama of xenophobia and ageism instead. But that’s only of the films in competition — had opening film “Amarcord” from Federico Fellini, which played inexplicably out of competition (and opening films can be either) been involved in the melee, it might have been a three-way fight. Also worthy of note is that this was the year of lovers on the lam films from rising American directors, with both Robert Altman’s “Thieves like Us” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Sugarland Express” making it into the selection, possibly marking the last time two such different filmmakers would ever have even superficially similar movies to shill for: The following year, Spielberg would invent the summer blockbuster with “Jaws,” while Altman would perfect the sprawling ensemble drama with “Nashville.”
With those two titans figuring in the lineup (and Spielberg taking the screenplay award), Hal Ashby’s iconic “The Last Detail” scooping Best Actor for Jack Nicholson (shared with Charles Boyer for Alain Resnais‘ now-neglected “Stavisky…“) and “The Conversation” winning the Big One, it was a year quietly dominated by American cinema — outside of the ever-controversial Pasolini, whose ribald “Arabian Nights” took the Grand Prix. But deeper in the selection were international auteurs, like Spanish director Carlos Saura, who would win the Grand Prix two years later for the great “Cria Cuervos;” Ken Russell with “Mahler;” and Mexican pioneer Arturo Ripstein with “The Holy Office,” though all of them would enjoyed greater success than with the films they presented this year. Even the (somewhat dubious) honor of closing the festival went to a U.S. title — Irvin Kershner‘s “S*P*Y*S*.” So yes, this was a year that started with the guy who did “8½” and ended with the guy who did “The Empire Strikes Back.” Don’t you just love Cannes?
1980 — The 33rd Cannes Film Festival
Notable Competition Titles: “All That Jazz” (Bob Fosse); “Kagemusha” (Akira Kurosawa); “Being There” (Hal Ashby); “The Big Red One” (Sam Fuller); “Breaker Morant” (Bruce Beresford); “Every Man For Himself” (Jean-Luc Godard)
Another year, another baffling out-of-competition choice. Andrei Tarkovsky‘s “Stalker” did not get a competitive berth, and its screening was interrupted by an electrician’s strike. One wonders if the choice to down tools in a display of worker rebellion during the showing of a film made under the Soviet regime — Tarkovsky’s last in Russia, as it happens — was deliberate (unlikely, seeing as it was a national strike, but still). In any case, it’s not like the competition lacked for big names without him, though in advance, the 1980 festival was all about the final return to screens of Japanese master Akira Kurosawa with “Kagemusha,” his first film in five years, and his first Japanese film in a decade (1975’s “Dersu Uzala” was Soviet-funded, as Kurosawa had been finding it hard to raise financing at home). It’s perhaps the mark of only the greatest greats that a film can be so heavily anticipated and still dazzle — “Kagemusha” is a masterpiece, and wholly deserved the Palme d’Or that the 1980 jury, headed (or chinned) by Kirk Douglas, awarded it.
Except they didn’t wholly award it — as had happened the year before with “Apocalypse Now” and “The Tin Drum,” the samurai epic shared the top honor with the very different and yet similarly balletic “All That Jazz” from choreographer/director/genius Bob Fosse. Elsewhere, the lineup was fleshed out in impressive form by “The Big Red One” from Sam Fuller, a director consistently embraced by the Cahiers du Cinéma crowd while still being regarded as a faintly B-movie genre filmmaker in his native U.S. And also by Hal Ashby’s terminally gentle “Being There,” with Peter Sellers, while French masters Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard both featured in the lineup too, with the former picking up the Grand Prix for “My American Uncle” with Gérard Depardieu.
1989 — The 42nd Cannes Film Festival
Notable Competition Titles: “sex, lies, and videotape” (Steven Soderbergh); “Do The Right Thing” (Spike Lee); “Cinema Paradiso” (Giuseppe Tornatore); “Mystery Train” (Jim Jarmusch); “Sweetie” (Jane Campion); “Jesus Of Montreal” (Denys Arcand); “Time Of The Gypsies” (Emir Kusturica); “Monsieur Hire” (Patrice Leconte); “Black Rain” (Shohei Imamura)
With the news just in that Jim Jarmusch’s new film “Paterson” will be competing this year, it’s fitting that we’re featuring 1989, the year his rich, delightful anthology film “Mystery Train,” that in aesthetic seemed to mark a slight change of direction from his no-wave roots, became his third title, after “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Down By Law” to play in Cannes. It’s important that indie Godhead Jarmusch was represented this year as in retrospect it certainly seems like a banner occasion for the then-emerging U.S. independent cinema scene. Jury President Wim Wenders even seemed to sense a changing of the guard in the zeitgeist when he handed the Palme d’Or to Steven Soderbergh, claiming that his film gave him confidence in the future of cinema (here’s a long read on the impact of “sex lies, and videotape” on its 25th anniversary).
Not everyone was quite so sanguine though — Spike Lee was vocal about feeling that “Do the Right Thing” not lifting the prize (as had been hotly tipped) was a snub by an all-white jury that just didn’t get the film’s incendiary, furious humanism. Even jury member Sally Field, according to an anecdote in Dennis Abrams’ book “Spike Lee,” reportedly later told him that while she had actively campaigned for it to win, her fellow jurors had not understood why Mookie threw the trashcan, and that was that. Still, though it’s tempting from a U.S. perspective to reduce Cannes 1989 to this clash, there was plenty of other stuff going on, notably the premier of Tornatore’s eternally beloved “Cinema Paradiso” (which won the Grand Prix) and the screening of the first feature from future Palme d’Or winner Jane Campion, “Sweetie,” as well as the brilliantly harrowing “Black Rain” (not the Ridley Scott one), in which Shohei Imamura imagines the emotional and literal fallout from Hiroshima, plus the premier of Emir Kusturica’s “Time Of The Gypsies” which won him Best Director in between his two Palmes d’Or (for “When Father Was Away On Business” and “Underground“).
