Cannes, Festival de

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 400 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), Secrets and Lies (1996, Mike Leigh), and The Pianist (2002, Roman Polanski).