una long history that of Cannes film festival. And quite memorable. Story of naked starlets in front of the Carlton, of paparazzi clogging the Croisette, of people waiting for the stars and crowds to quell. A daily chronicle that has mixed with glamor and meanness like nowhere elsethere in libertine France and democratically cochon. One step away from Cage aux folles of fantasy of Saint Tropez and from the nudist island Ile du Levant. Between concrete, wooden piers and the early twentieth century decadence of the Riviera.
How not to love this carnival that grinds everything, fashion and independent stories, Hollywood’s millions squandered on promotion and Palme d’Or winners from Georgian and Turkish directors. Also place of great love stories – it was here that Grace Kelly met Ranieri for the first time, give up the cinema and nearly collapsing Alfred Hitchcock: that Kirk Douglas met his future wife; That Ryan Gosling kissed her fetish director on the red carpet Nicolas Winding Refn.
And post of opinions expressed without filters, of snobberies and scandals. Of fans fueled above all by the directors themselves, not so much by the fandom. With Spike Lee that – he said to himself – he waited with a baseball bat for Wim Wenders to pass (President of the jury guilty of having awarded the Palme d’Or 1989 a Sex, lies and videotapes instead of a do the right thing).
Or with Robert Altman which, at the Nice airport, he almost hit Pauline Kaeluntouchable criticism of the New Yorker (as well as his lifelong supporter), guilty of having sabotaged 3 womenthe film with which it was in competition in 1978 and which it only won the Best Actress award (for Shelley Duvall).
Nazi Lars von Trier and barefoot Julia Roberts
The last, among the directors, to let go was Lars von Trier. The only one, too, to be dismissed as persona non grata after having – during the press conference Melancholia2011 – candidly woven a panegyric in favor of Hitler. Not a Marvel movie villain, just the real and terrible one from the history books. What together with Mussolini, in 1939, prevented the victory of There Great illusion at the Venice Film Festival.
Julia Roberts in Cannes in 2016. (Getty Images)
And then we ask ourselves, what triggers irreverence at the Cannes Film Festival, the sensational exit? Something in the air, in the ground, in the water? Perhaps only the acumen of the organizers, and the zeitgeist that once a year seems to pass and stop here. A free spirit with a great desire to have fun. To mark the eras well too.
From the Nouvelle Vague to the New Hollywood, Cannes has seen the birth of currents and styles, burying trends and recovering old languages. He has seen the stars throw off their heels and rebel against the dictatorship of the red carpet (only to fall back on it the following year). Emerging Godard, Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, even Nanni Moretti.
Assist to highly booed films and then acclaimed as masterpieces. A mass exits from the projections (Irreversible by Gaspar Noé, 2002). This year also on the return of Johnny Depp, buried by harassment charges, fired outright from the studio, left for dead. Instead he is here, in the place for Adèle Haenel it’s the “rapists festival” (according to the French actress who withdrew as a political act the festival would defend abusers like Depardieu and Polanski; an accusation to which Thierry Frémaux, director, replied in a very harsh way), and for others it is a kind of oasis. The last feud unconquered by streaming in the race, other than Asterix with the Romans.
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