f festival international du film de Cannes first opened on the .itifortunate date of September 1,1939, as Hitler invaded Poland. Reborn in April 1946 as the first major postwar international cultural event, the Festi-aj promised the ''finest films in the world presented in the finest setting in ;iie world."1 With its glamorous sheen, it would help project an image of the /ccovery of France and would serve, more concretely, as an ideal vehicle for vnewing tourism to the Cote d'Azur. But it did more than that.
[n the context of film history, "Le Festival de Cannes" as it was later known, or the Cannes Film Festival, became the shooting star in an ever-expanding cosmos of film festivals after the war.2 It played a key role in the ievelopment of the postwar "art film," helping to launch the French New Wave when it awarded Francois Truffaut best director for his Les 400 Coups a\ 1959. The Festival also provided an international venue for the exhibition of films made in countries that would emerge after the war as having na-cional cinemas of international value: Mexico, Japan, Egypt, and India.
But the Festival is also central to the cultural history of the postwar era. It showcased the importance of film to the project of the postwar globalisation of culture. At a pivotal moment in American domination of the international film market, the French-run Festival developed an international platform for the world's films and film personalities. In Cannes, films and ;heir stars had access to an unprecedented scope of publicity, disseminated by the increasingly photo-oriented mass international press. While studies di cultural diplomacy have underscored national chauvinism, rivalry, and lie frigid battles of the Cold War, the history of the Festival describes the forging of a collaborative international film culture.3 At Cannes, nations, ududing the United States, coexisted, cooperated, and coproduced. A confluence of certain vital elements allowed the Festival to succeed: the association of France and the Riviera with cultural cosmopolitanism, the Festi--al's creation of a press juggernaut, and the transformation of this spot on the Riviera into a literal crossroads for the world filmmaking community nil conspired to make the Festival the world's largest film market. Though . he Festival fell short of achieving the true cosmopolitanism to which it aspired, it successfully shaped the filmmaking community's practices more :han we have understood.
Cosmopolitanism was the Festival's driving cultural value, photographic stills its primary mode of international publicity, and film commerce its underlying practice; these elements enabled the Festival to attract the world's Sim producing community to participate. France established its centrality
CHAPTER TWO
in international film culture by playing host to the world's most important Festival and market. If French national products did not dominate the box office in most parts of the globe, Cannes promoted internationalism and eventually auteurism instead. The Festival contributed to the internationalization of the film industry in symbolic and actual terms. The Festival activities organized at the behest of French cultural diplomats and film professionals show that the French moved beyond the notion of "national cinema" as both an ideal and as a mode of film production. In the process, they had an important influence on Hollywood and in developing a global film community. The Cannes Film Festival, from its inception in 1939 through the end of 1968, marking its first phase, shows how important the French were in shaping the direction of world film culture in the postwar era. The Festival cultivated the idea that such an international film culture existed in the first place and that France could serve as the perfect staging grounds because of the long-term French investment in cultural cosmopolitanism.
The Festival managed to become world famous because of this universalizing vision as well as the actual films shown there. But the historically specific configuration of other factors—its location, the management's canny organization of the press, their ability to draw the stars the press favored, and the development of the film market—worked together to establish its success. Although there can be no doubt that the Festival served French national and economic ends, more significantly, it helped give renewed validation to the notion of film as an international business and cultural form in a period of apparent American dominance.
The Festival organizers sought the cooperation of countries around the world, but it forged its strongest partnership with the American film-producing community, for whom the benefits of participation seemed less obvious than for smaller countries. Though few would dispute the rise of American film hegemony in the first half of the twentieth century in the wake of World War 1, only the French had the confidence, know-how, and sheer nerve to challenge American rule after World War II. Most studies have characterized this confrontation as cultural protectionism and focused on the postwar impositions of film quotas by the French government to reserve screen time for French films; scholars also stress the French governmental subsidy of the film industry that made loans for the production of high-quality French films.4 The Cannes Film Festival, however, created an international stage for films and film culture, and also promoted international film business. Its direction forged an alliance with Hollywood that would define such concepts as "global Hollywood."5
The Cannes Film Festival
59
The Cannes Film Festival may be the most celebrated film festival, but it was not the first. That distinction goes to the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, better known as the Venice Film Festival, which began in August of 1932 as an extension of the Biennale d'Arte. By 1938 when the Venice festival awarded Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (The Olympiad) the grand prize, observers and participants rightly saw the gathering as a platform for fascists rather than as an international competition. The British, American, and French delegations responded by claiming they would no longer participate at Venice. Philippe Erlanger, director of the Association Franchise dAction Artistique, the agency responsible for the travel of French art and culture abroad, in his capacity as the French representative to the Venice festival, teamed with the French government's minister of foreign affairs and the minister of national education to establish that France would host a gen-uinely international film festival the following year.
Though it vied withother attractive locations such as Biarritz, Vichy, and even Paris to host the Festival, boosters from the city of Cannes were strategic in securing the selection of their town. The organizers of the first Cannes Film Festival set out to democratically promote film on an international scale in pointed distinction to the propagandist mission in Venice. Regulations from 1939 stated that Cannes would "encourage the development of the cinematographic arts in all its forms and to create among all film producing countries a spirit of collaboration."6 The Festival proclaimed it would be free of "all ideology and nationalism," and competition rules underscored that intention.7 To ensure fair competition, Axis powers Italy, Germany, and Japan were excluded. The jury was to consist of members from each of the nine participant nations: Belgium, the United States, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. France would simply compete as one among the nations. Each country would propose its films, and the jury would select the best of each nation's offerings in addition to awarding an overall international prize.3
A radio ad in July of 1939 announced, "the international capital of film" was set to debut its festival at the start of September 1939.9 Louis Lumiere, the French father of film, was to preside over the three-week event. MGM sent a special boatload of stars including Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks, and Norma Shearer. A giant papier-mache Notre Dame decorated the Palm Beach sands to promote William Dieterle's film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Journalist Maurice Bessy, who many years later became the Festival's director, noted in Cinemonde on the eve of the event that it would be a "peaceful victory" and that the nations gathered "no less in art than in politics are not
EO CHAPTER TWO
prepared to bend before tyranny."10 But events intervened. Hitler invaded Poland at the same moment and attendees scrambled to return home. As Erlangcr noted, "the name of the festival was up in lights in the front of the Casino Municipal when human folly turned out the lights."13
Although there would be no film festival in Cannes until 1946, it was not for lack of trying. Traces of various wartime plans offer glimpses into French cultural bureaucrats and their wartime experience and remind us of just how central film had become not only to government propaganda but also to everyday life during wartime. The "phony war," as it has been called by historians, began in October 1939, but Georges Huisman, the director of Beaux-Arts wrote in November 1939 to Jean Zay the minister of national education, hoping to keep the festival idea alive despite the impending doom. In p articular, he worried that th i s new war woul d repeat the devastation that the war of 1914-18 had wrought on the French film industry and argued that a festival might keep their national industry alive.12 Philippe Erlanger maintained plans to reopen the Festival in March 1940, but urged the mayor of Cannes to keep the local press quiet to avoid enflaming the Italians while he worked the proper diplomatic channels.13 Although he considered the idea of a winter festival a terrible one, mostly because the war had distracted the press from reports concerning any other topic, the mayor cooperated but warned Erlanger that nothing could be worse than "news of a festival taking place in front of empty seats."14 The city of Cannes, he reminded Erlanger, had a high standard of event planning, which the conditions of war might spoil. Better to hold no festival than a mediocre one.
Discussions continued into the next year. Georges Prade, a Cannes booster in Paris, wrote to the mayor urging him to consider supporting a wartime event so that the city would maintain its hold on the Festival and not lose it to competing sites if the Cannes municipal authorities lost interest.15 No one seemed to worry about the dangers of the actual war intervening, echoing Marc Bloch's famous indictment of France's lack of preparedness for the war when it eventually came."
The invasion of France in May and the defeat in June had important implications for all French industries, film among them. In the reorganization of many of its agencies, the Vichy government created the Comite' d'Organisation des Industries Cinematographiques (COIC), whose connections to the German occupiers were strong. The COIC would lay the groundwork for the postwar structure of French cinema, developing after the war into the postwar Centre National de la Cinematographic. After a pause starting in June, film production began again at the end of 1940 in studios in
Tlif Cannes Film Festival
the southern unoccupied zone while the Germans set-up Continental Films in Paris. The French moviegoing public was unaware of any of the distinctions since Continental's French-language films were not meant as propaganda vehicles but rather to keep up the veneer of normality and morale in occupied France.17
The COIC extended the hope that a wartime festival might happen. In October of 1941, a note from the Action Artistique to the secretary of state of national education and youth informed the secretary that Count d'Herbement of the COIC had approached them, having made certain advances with his connections in German film. His ambitions ran high. The note says the count planned to accomplish what even Venice never had: "a gathering where, despite the current state of affairs, the peoples of Europe, America and Asia would meet."18 How they planned to accomplish this is left unarticulated.19 Two months later the escalation of the war with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the war made the gathering of the peoples of Europe, Asia, and America impossible.
The archival paper trail relating to the Festival runs cold for the rest of the war until October 1944, only months after the liberation of Paris and only a month after the Germans were driven from France. At that time, Philippe Erlanger and Henri Gendre, a Cannes hotelier (and father of actor Louis Jourdan), suggested to the new general director of cinema that a festival be planned for December 1945. Erlanger himself had not even been officially reintegrated into his civil service post in the Action Artistique service. (That came in December 1944. Because he was a Jew, Erlanger had been decommissioned on December 19,1940.)20 Such determination on his part was prescient but also suggests the central place that film would occupy in the cultural and economic agenda of the nation after the war. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs certainly understood this. Its cultural affairs officer commented, "It is clear that French cinematic production will be called upon, after the war, to become one of the most effective means of French propaganda abroad."21
Planning for the Festival officially began in the spring 1945, but the postwar conditions presented many challenges. In April of that year, the organizing committee of the Festival wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explaining that all the major hotels in Cannes had been requisitioned and occupied by French and American forces. In fact, Cannes served as the officers' site in the United States Riviera Recreational Area. (Enlisted men went to Nice.) A note from Henri Gendre informed the Quai d'Orsay that the American colonel Gum had promised that when hostilities actually ceased
CHAPTER TWO
they would take up Monaco's offer and move their offices and troops there to make way for the Festival.22 For a variety of reasons, many budgetary, the Festival was pushed hack again to September 1946. The organizers excluded Germany. Spain, and Japan but invited Italy, mostly to fend off the potential revival of the Venice festival.23 The Soviet Union was counted among the twenty-one participant nations in what its organizers heralded as the first postwar international cultural event.24
Fireworks, flower parades, receptions, and an impromptu movie house in the municipal casino made the first Festival a stunning few weeks in an era of otherwise profound deprivation. The opening evening party also featured Grace Moore, the American star of the Metropolitan Opera, singing such popular French favorites as selections from Jules Massenet's Louise and performing a rousing rendition of the French national anthem, the "La Marseillaise." Married at the time to a Frenchman, Moore's presence signaled the vital importance of American participation in the Festival. As a press release announcing the Festival in 1945 boasted, it would be "a big show of friendship between nations, and particularly between France and the United States who began the project."25 This comment came on the heels of particularly tense moments after the war when the flooding of France with American films led to the plagued negotiations of the Blum-Byrnes Accords.26 Despite the bitter anti-Americanism that the quota battles produced in the filmmaking community, the Festival organizers clearly believed that cooperation between France and America was possible and mutually beneficial.
Although the first Festival would be remembered in the long term as a significant event in the history of film aesthetics because it introduced Italian neorealism with Rossellini's Rome, Open City, its inaugural program also confirmed the overall health of France after the war and the role film and other forms of culture might play in promoting international understanding. The poster for the Festival in 1946 featured a film camera operator with a globe for a head, posed to evoke the transformation of a machine-gun into a movie camera. Through his camera runs films composed of different national flags (fig. 2.1).27 French observers echoed the Festival's graphic message of internationalism, stressing film's capacity to promote universal understanding in the era of newly achieved peace. As Leon Moussinac, correspondent for the Communist film publication L'Ecranfrancais, remarked in his opening commentary describing the Festival, "There are thousands of ways to serve peace. But cinema's power of rapprochement and influence goes beyond that of other modes of expression in that it directly and simultaneously touches the worldwide crowds."3S People associated with the Fes-
The Cannes Film Festival
63
GVNNES
DU 20 SGPTffMBRE AU 5 OCTOURti 1946 j
2.1 Cannes Film Festival poster. 1946. Paul Colin, reprinted in France Illustration. September 21,1946. Courtesy: BlFl,
tival such as poet, writer, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, a regular on the Riviera social scene and president of the jury several times, perpetuated the notion of film as the universal language. He applauded the Festival as "an apolitical no man's land, a microcosm of what the world would look like if people could speak to each other directly and speak the same language."29 War-torn Europe looked to the popularity of film and to the seeming uni-versalism of both entertainment and the language of images to repair its fissures. This rhetoric recalls prior discussions of early American cinema's role in integrating immigrants, but in postwar Europe it took on new meaning and urgency as the need for international understanding emerged.30
CHAPTER TWO
The first Festival may have been a success but the event's future was hardly assured. Competition from Venice presented the new Festival with its foremost problem. At the time, it seemed to both the Festival organizers and the press that there would be room for only one festival.31 In fact, when the French learned in late spring of 1946 that plans were afoot for a Venice renewal, shuttle diplomacy by Erlanger resulted in an accord between the two festivals in which each would host a major international event every other year and in the off-year the other would offer a "film week" that involved no international competition.32 This competition from Venice and the unsure budgetary contributions of the French government compromised the Festival's stability between 1946 and 1950. In fact, the French government's support of the event declined in the initial years. In 1946 government money accounted for 89 percent of the event budget. By 1953, the government's contribution shrunk to 55 percent.33 After the 1947 event, the Festival also took on the hybrid administrative status of an "Association de 1901," which meant that it became an independently ran organization in the public interest, the equivalent of a nonprofit organization, but one that, because of its general public interest, would and could receive government money This established its independent status while guaranteeing a long life of dependence on the government for financial support.
A diverse cast of characters ended up leading this hybrid organization from its headquarters in Paris. While Philippe Erlanger remained an active member of the Cannes team, Robert Favre Le Bret became the Festival's administrative director in 1947, Favre Le Bret combined the finesse of a cultural diplomat with commercial experience garnered from some years spent working as a journalist. During the years he ran the Festival, he also headed the Paris Opera, where he organized foreign tours. He set the tone for the mondain quality of the Cannes Festival (he was often photographed looking at ease in a white tuxedo and sunglasses) and was accused over the years as director of not caring or even knowing enough about film. Thus, although the Festival reported to the government, its personnel had experience in the private sector. Also joining Favre Le Bret were film professionals such as Marcel l'Herbier, who represented the producers and writers organization the Syndicat des Producteurs Francois et de ^Association des Auteurs de Films. French film producers always had representation in the Festival's decision-making bodies. Although France is reputed for its "stat-ism," the Festival's administrative operation suggests that the commercial and public sector worked in tandem as it organized this international cultural event.
Thi Cannes Film Festival
In the wake of Cannes Film Festival's success, film festivals popped up from Carlsbad to Punta del Este, from Berlin to Beirut. The Cannes's files list .ibout eighteen festivals in 1963 alone. On the surface, festivals promoted tourism, which helps explain why many localities yearned to get into the festival game. As one Cannes city official reasoned, given the usual cost of advertising, the seventeen Festival days and "the hundreds of magazines, weeklies and dailies that publish articles, photos and colorful reports of Cannes,... it is easy to see that the festival gives Cannes immeasurable publicity."34 Film professionals, however, did not always meet the multiplication of festivals with great enthusiasm. As early as 1947, Variety noted, "the plethora of film festivals in Europe is becoming a permanent headache for the bona fide picture people. ... Everyone is hoping that some regulation will provide for one festival a year in all of Europe similar to the ones governing the Olympic Games and international fairs."35 A 1951 dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Paris discusses a movement to create a single "Nobel" prize film festival, a proposal that had gained the approval of the International Federation of Motion Picture Producers.36 In 1952, André Lang, representing the French Critics Association, explained to the Cannes Film Festival organizers, "there aren't enough good movies to divide them between festivals in a single year."37
Each festival sought to distinguish itself from the next hut a clear hierarchy emerged in which the Cannes Film Festival became the first among them. As early as 1953, the organizers noted that it had become "the universal meeting ground for film____We can say that the Cannes Festival has become, little by little, a sort of Olympic games of film."38 In 1956, the Paris correspondent for Variety, Gene Moskowitz, declared, "it is possible to say that Cannes' prestige is far greater than its chief rival, the Venice Film Festival."39 The next year, Variety called Cannes "unquestionably the major film event on the Continent."40 The Saturday Evening Post proclaimed it "the most important (festival) from every point of view—in attendance, publicity, number of films shown and amount of business transacted."41 Darryl Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century Fox, wrote to Favre Le Bret that "there is need for only one festival in the world and I would say it is Cannes."42
The Festival's scale and genuinely international quality helped Cannes achieve recognition. While it may have promoted French economic interests by stimulating tourism, it did not serve as a mere pretext for showcasing French films. French aspirations were grander. The Festival organizers sought to establish and direct world cinema from the beaches of the Mediterranean and readily envisioned France as the perfect place because of its
CHAPTER TWO
association with both internationalism and a commitment to excellence in culture. As a press release boasted, "No nation other than France could better preside over such a gathering with a spirit of artistic independence and absolute impartiality."43 In a later moment of self-congratulation, the Festival administration noted, "we must never forget that our liberal and open policies, especially towards countries without a distinguished film industry (the festival must also offer encouragement and a model), contributed enormously to our world-wide fame and to the success of the festival."44 The Festival offered small but significant film-producing countries such as Sweden an incomparable audience for products made in Northern Europe. It also invited people interested in film from countries with little or no national film production to participate as observers, hoping to help stimulate filmmaking around the globe.
When officials boasted (and boast they did) about the success of their event, they often defined their achievement in creating the crossroads of the world's film culture. As a Festival official noted in 1959 in a report destined for the newly created Cabinet of the Ministry of Culture, headed by Andre' Malraux, "all the big stars of world film have come to Cannes in the course of the last few years."45 The Festival measured its success by its ability to host the world's cinema community, calling it in 1949 "a sort of International Conference on the cinematic arts ... the biggest film gathering."40 In Cannes, argued the Festival's promoters to the government, France would host the world, reinforcing both the nation and its leadership in the greater international community.
Others touted the event in similar terms. The executive secretary of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences applauded the Festival's internationalism: "it did bring most of the current films of the world into the focus of a single show place.... small countries and large ones were accorded the same courtesies and privileges."47 Cannes' mayor also noted "the presence of a cosmopolitan crowd speaking all the world's languages gives the festival its incomparable ambiance."48
How broad was the Festival competition? Over the years diplomatic issues came into play at specific moments, but an overall ethos of inclusion and participation prevailed to embrace as many of the film-producing nations as possible. The Eastern bloc nations, for example, came in and out of the list of participant nations. In attendance at the Festival in 1946, the USSR abstained in 1947 and 1949 and returned in 1951. Absent again until 1954, the Soviets participated from then on suggesting that actually being a part of
The Cannes Film Festival
the event was more important than posturing or using the event as a political football. The Chinese in Taiwan sent a film in 1959; in i960 the People's Republic of China began to visit Cannes. The former Axis powers (except Italy) were absent from the participant nations in 1946; by 1949 Germany participated and in 1951, Japan and Spain joined the participant nations. Latin American countries participated and presented films, and Mexican cinema, in particular, received a great deal of positive critical attention. Most of the European nations (such as Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland) participated frequently, but only when they felt they had a sufficiently good film to exhibit. The Festival cast its net wide: the new state of Israel sent a film in 1949; India, Egypt, and Morocco regularly sent films. The original seventeen participant nations eventually numbered, on average, about twenty-eight. Although some nations would come and go, the Festival exhibited the broadest range of the world's films in one place at one time. What this ever-shuffling list of nations suggests is that the worst of political enemies could come together to participate in an international cultural event.49
Visitors and the press brought a host of associations and expectations with them to the South of France and this played an important role in the construction and reception of the event. Like the rest of the Riviera, Cannes had been an international playground since the early nineteenth century. Yet unlike Nice, tinged with faded nineteenth-century Russian and British aristocracy, Cannes was perhaps best known for sumptuous villas and its swank beach clubs, and for its new American money. Frank Jay Gould built his first Riviera palace in Cannes; its 1929 beach and casino club was called Le Palm Beach and movie stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, and Douglas Fairbanks helped found the summer season in the late 1920s and '30s (figs. 2.2 and 2.3).
Cannes' success in drawing film people from around the world was due in no small measure to its billing as "Hollywood on the Riviera."so By connecting the Riviera and Hollywood in the public imagination, the Festival also underscored filmmaking's link to a "Mediterranean" climate. Atmospheric comparisons were constantly made; it is not clear whether the movies were associated with the sun and beach because of Hollywood or because the sun and beach embodied the glitz and glamour with which film culture had early become associated. Recalling the rhetoric of California boosters who imagined their state as an American Mediterranean, Cannes boosters invoked California.51 Georges Prade, municipal deputy of Paris, explained in arguing for the Festival in its planning stages,
Tli£ Csraes Film festival
As one American producer recently told me: Noon on the Croisette, the boat for the islands, the water at Juan-les-pins, at Cap d'Antibes, the yachts, the planes that cross with their white trails.,, is this not "la joie de vivre," and the same climate as that of the cinema itself ? This is something that will transform the Cote d'Azur into a center of one of the most important industries in modem times, With its climate, with the astonishing range of its cultures, by the proximity to snow, the Cote d'Azur, a night away from Paris and a few hours from London by plane, will become the Florida and California of Europe.52
Americans saw in the Riviera an environment that evoked California, but the French also appeared bent on promoting this association as well. Phihppe Erlanger applauded the Festival's ambiance and its parties and receptions by remarking that "they give the festival the actual atmosphere of California."53 The French associated sun and filmmaking with California, but the allusion had its own local reference as well. As the news bulletin from Uni-France Film suggested, "the Cote d'Azur may well be called a French California. And foreigners from all over the world, even California itself, do not deny it."54
Just as movies became associated with the sunny climate of Los Angeles during the same period in the United States, so they did in France, where many people in the film industry hoped that the studios in nearby Nice, where films had been shot as early as 1911, would take root. The studio La Victorine was officially opened in 1919 by Serge Sandberg, an early film exhibition pioneer in France who believed that the South of France was a potential paradise for filmmakers as it had been for painters.S5 French filmmakers from then on attempted to establish the Riviera as a center for filmmaking. A truly remarkable wartime attempt by Jean Renoir to create a studio in nearby Valbonne (Renoir has otherwise been represented as having never had any intention of staying in Vichy France), underscores the interest by French filmmakers in transforming the south of France into another Hollywood.56 In addition, like California, the South of France immediately became associated with the new culture of the automobile and stood out in France, much as Los Angeles did in the United States, as a motorist's paradise (fig. 2.4).57 Finally, to many observers, Cannes seemed so picture-perfect as to resemble a film set. Critic and filmmaker Alexandre Astruc noted in 1946 that the city was a "ville cinema" which seemed to emerge "like a prefabricated set from a Technicolor film. One might say that a set designer had plopped down a sumptuous construction at the edge of the Mediterranean"
CHAPTER TWO
2.4 Robert. Hugette. Arlette, Florette, Antibes 795J Photograph by Jacques Henr: Lartigue = Ministers de la Culture-France / AAJHL.
(figs. 2.5 and 2.6).58 Cannes was an excellent backdrop for any festival, but it was the perfect site for a festival dedicated to film. When contrasted to the charming but decrepit lagoon-city of Venice with its Lido beach, one cannot help but draw the Hollywood-Cannes comparison.
In Cannes' resort culture, festivity and pleasure became a fundamental part of the Festival's image. One critic asked whether Cannes was a "film festival or a festival of festivities?" He complained about the frantic pace of events: "screenings, screenings outside the competition, press conferences, cocktail parties, receptions, luncheons .. . Too many banal society
2.6 View or the beach froin the roof öf the Palace, c earfy !9S0s. Courtesy. Sl'Fl, Fl F
7J
CHAPTER TWO
receptions where cinema has nothing to do with it."59 Another critic had it both ways: "across this enormous Carnival, this fair of him and mondanites, film (which is after all an art!) still manages to find its place."60 The mondain ambiance seemed to matter so much that the organizers insisted that evening screenings were to be attended in formal attire by guests and reporters alike.51 The Festival organizers invitedjournalists to the main beachside boulevard, the Croisette, in black tie. Other events included the flower parades along the avenue, press conferences, and appearances by movie stars. The press, decked out in their finest, covered the Festival as one big party.
The social events and their accompanying spontaneous and planned rituals that prominently featured in the popular press presaged the "pseudo events" ofmass media culture.62 By 1951, most Festival events and press coverage were in place, except for the creation of an overall first place prize, the Palme d'Or, first awarded in 1955. Until then, the prizes were a hodge-podge designed to honor as many films as possible. Continuity in administrative leadership also assured a coherent development of these rituals and their publicity. Erlanger continued to participate actively in the event's organization and Robert Favre Le Bret served as the primary organizer and director of the Festival until 1968 when the winds of social and cultural upheaval affected even the film world. Henri Langlois and his partisans used the broad events of Paris in May 1968 to shut down the Festival and it was subsequently reorganized.63 ,
Though some critics faulted the Festival for its frivolity, the parties gave reporters something to talk about. In fact, the Festival was so associated with paracinematic events that Favre Le Bret, writing to L'Express editor Frangoise Giroud, complained about journalist Pierre Billard's coverage of the Festival, lamenting that he was most upset about the magazine's notion that the Festival preferred parties to film: "I will limit myself to reminding you that from Italian neo-realism to the New Wave, the entire evolution of film for the last twenty years has been formed at Cannes."64 Favre Le Bret needed to remind the press that the Festival was about film because he had helped the Festival succeed by staging an unrelenting series of extracinematic parties. The press, relying on cliched notions of the gaietefran$aise, enthusiastically covered the fun in Cannes.
Movies alone could not establish the Festival as a worldwide stage for international film culture but press coverage of "events" could. For the exclusive ears of the Festival's organizers, however, Favre Le Bret admitted that extracinematic events were essential as he looked back over more than fifteen years of festivals in 1966: "If the Festival is recognized worldwide, it is much less due to film reviews . .. than to all the extra-cinematic events.
Tlie Lannes Film Festival
73
Whether we like it or not, this is what gives the Cannes meeting its appealing shape and provides an alluring atmosphere that pleases all the foreign guests and provides their memories with lively and brilliant images."65
The key vehicle for the representation of the international gathering became the worldwide press corps. The press assured the greatest interna-t i onal buzz. Print journalists, especially related to film trade and fan publications, attended from many countries. The photojournalists covering Cannes tended to be either French (the Mirkine family became the key Cannes photographers and were given excellent access), but by the mid-1950s photographers arrived from all over the world; they often worked for one of the big photo agencies such as Magnum and Rapho. Once television coverage increased in the mid-ig6os, the audiovisual press corps included journalists mostly from Europe and America. Cannes events and the photo opportunities they generated played a central role not only via print, but also by the international dissemination of photos as a primary vehicle of publicity. As Favre Le Bret noted, "this extraordinary publicity, that reaches millions of people around the world, is due in large part, it must not be forgotten, to the hundreds of photographers and reporters of French and foreign TV."66
The Festival had a fairly straightforward approach to the international press: more is better. In fact, much of the Festival's budget went toward paying for journalists, both French and foreign, to attend. From the start, more than half the Festival's invited guests were journalists. Over time, and as the Festival had hoped, the number of journalists who attended at their own expense far outnumbered those who were invited. In 1951, 300 journalists attended, of whom 150 were invited. In 1954, of the 400 journalists in attendance, 177 were the Festival's guests. Only a year later, 614 arrived to cover the Festival, of whom only 201 were invited. The Festival steadied its invitations at about 200 but by 1963, 808 journalists attended. In 1972, there were 1,000.67 A team of seasonal employees, led initially by a young woman who would become the well-known novelist Christiane de Rochefort and her assistant Louisette Fargette, who eventually assumed the director's position, were charged with the onerous task of handing out press certification, which also guaranteed admission to the films and press conferences. In a tribute to Fargette on the occasion of her fortieth year working at the Festival, noted television interviewer Frangois Chalais remarked, "I saw her office under siege as if an impenetrable fortress.... I'd often ask myself, 'How does she do it? Your job put you in front of the worst of the starved savage beasts of the jungle ... journalists.'"68
The press did not simply "cover" the Festival. Its presence also helped create the Festival's ceremonies. Photographers' needs created the Festival's
74
CHAPTER TWO
2,7 The staircase in the Festival Palace at what Cocteau calied "a Festiva about the staircase," 1952. Courtesy: BIF(, FIF,
great ritual—la montee des marches (the staircase climb). In the old Palace, the staircase stood at the center of the interior hall, not unlike the stairs at the Opera in Paris. Journalists fought each other to get a photo of the stars as they entered the theater. This led Jean Cocteau to utter his famous regret: Vest un festival d'escalier" (a staircase festival).69 In the Palace, the live crowd outside missed the ascent of the staircase entirely and its design made it difficult for photographers to shoot entries and even more difficult for television cameras to film. In fact, most of the images of the evening arrivals were taken not on the steps but as stars entered. As the Festival grew in size, pressure for better photographic access to the stairs increased. The new Palace, which opened in 1983, allowed the show, complete with a huge red-carpeted outdoor staircase, to take place on the sidewalk—better for onlookers and still and television cameras (figs. 2.7-2.9).70
CHAPTER TWO
Once filmmakers and cultural diplomats from around the world understood the extent of the media presence, they wanted to send their films and stars, and even attend themselves to take advantage of the well-organized, free publicity. As the Festival organizers noted, "outside the attribution of the prizes, the Festival is an extraordinary publicity launch for a good movie."71 Nathaniel Golden of the Department of Commerce, the American delegate to the Festival in 1959, urged even greater American participation in the Festival for its "goldmine of world-wide free publicity."72 In particular, he observed the large numbers of still and newsreel photographers who acquainted audiences around the world with an actor or actress's image before their film performance was even known.
But the "news" from the Festival came in a variety of forms. Newspapers, glossy magazines, and the burgeoning field of telejournalism made a global audience spectators at the Festival. In particular, the rise of such publications as Time, Life, Vu, and Match in the late thirties had spawned new players in the profession—the photojournalist and the photo agency such as Magnum and Raphe73 The confluence of the Festival with the rise of the photojournalists—or "paparazzi" {as they became known after Fellini's shutterbugging hound "Paparazzo" in the i960 film and Palme d'Or winner La Dolce vita)—and of television journalism favored coverage of the Festival as a series of photo opportunities. If, as noted earlier, Cannes appeared as the perfect studio lot set, film stars, film professionals, starlets and onlookers stood out against this backdrop as the beautiful subjects photographed in the foreground. As an American journalist observed, "Since photographers are the elite of the Festival and are welcomed everywhere, a good plov is to borrow a camera and, looking hassled and irritable, push through."7" Being photographed was the name of the game. As the same reporter for the Saturday Evening Post remarked, "the Festival's host is M. Francois Mitterrand, the Minister of Justice—chosen for the honor not because justice has anything to do with the film industry, but because he is the most photogenic of French ministers."75
The history of the press coverage of the Festival also dovetailed with the rise of the new medium of television and its reporting. Festival organizers sought to use television in a variety of ways. As early as the 1951, they considered featuring a simple demonstration of television. After all, the medium was still in its infancy. Another year they contemplated that, in light of the Palace's limited number of spectators, they could retransmit the Festival films on a giant television screen. But they worried that the potentially poor quality would only magnify public aggravation with the exclusivity of
The Cannes Film Festival
Festival events.76 In general, this group charged with the promotion of film d id not imagine the new medium as a threat to the seventh art. As one orga-nizer noted, "television has enriched film."77
The press—print, filmic and televisual—represented the Cannes Festival as an elite international gathering to which millions around the world were invited through the voyeuristic powers of the mass media. If staged events drew the press, the movie stars drew audiences. As Favre Le Bret noted,
The seductive nature of the site of this international meeting of film is decidedly favorable to the development of such an ambiance but it is not the essential element. That element can be found more so in the animation that goes on during the entire event; this animation is crystallized around the presence of certain ar-ustic personalities which confirm its spectacular physiognomy... it is those personalities that also allow the journalists from all over the world to write stories that will interest a broad public.78
Stars were a key lure. They paraded in convertibles on the Croisette, gave press conferences, and most ritualistically, appeared in formal attire for the evening screening, the apogee of the day's events. As one Canadian newspaper explained, "compared to all the distractions that Cannes offers during this international event, the highlight of the day is the arrival of the stars for the evening performance."79 The evening screening showed stars "going to the movies" as well as stars accompanying their own films. At these screenings, formal and ritualistic star appearances were on offer. Unlike traditional star iconography, which relied on the single star or the fan magazine coverage of events such as film premieres that related to a single film, the Festival offered a collective portrait of the film world comparable in scale only to the Academy Awards, which it could even claim to exceed because of its international reach. In fact, the Academy Awards, which only hecame a "theatrical event" in 1944, was not telecast until 1953. By then, Cannes had already garnered a great deal of international press coverage.
The connection between stars, photography, and film was integral to how the star system functioned in general.80 But the Festival also contributed to the development of the star system as a symbolic order (as opposed to an economic structure). Edgar Morin, one of the first sociologists of film and celebrity, commented on the Festival even before he published his landmark books, Le Cinema ou Vhomme imagmaire (1956) and Les Stars (1957).31 As other observers had also noted, it was not the films, but "the film world on parade" that made the Festival exciting.32 At the center of this world, Morin argued, were stars whose actual presence seemed to prompt great curiosity
CHAPTER TWO
about their status as "real" people as opposed to their cinematic image. What one could observe at the Festival, much like on a safari, were the interactions of stars with each other as well as their individual and collective display for the public. Yet Marin observed that the lived reality of the star was simply one extended photo shoot. The Festival itself was like a sound-stage: "If the star's real-life is like a movie, it is also that the Festival life is essentially cinematic [e'est que la vie du festival est essentiellement du cinema.]"83 For Morin, at the heart of cinematic culture was photography itself: "All that is filmed is photographed a hundred times. Alt that is photographed resembles that which is filmed. All that is photogenic aspires to be photographed."84
Morin interpreted the Festival's iconography in an essay written in 1955 in which he developed many of his important observations of the star system as embedded in long-term cultural habits and rituals. He identified several types of image: the star's entry to the Palace; the "staircase climb," which he compared to the Roman triumph or the ascent of the Virgin; the classic poses that suggested the lives of stars are filled with joy, happiness, and love; the Madonna and child sequences in which a female star is paired with a child. In addition, he noted that the images served over time to humanize the deific stars. Finally, he commented on the image of the starlet, whose structural necessity inhered in the fact that she shone light on the grandeur of the more important star. In other words, Cannes, it turns out, provided Morin with the material for what became some of the earliest and most influential ideas about film stardom as a system.85
Yet in trying to render the Festival within a longer visual cultural tradition, Morin missed the particularity of the Cannes mix of star imagery. Cannes' novelty included juxtaposition of the classic "star" photography of the staged Hollywood premiere and other official "photo shoots" alongside the seeming spontaneity that the beach seemed perfect to exploit. For example, for every traditional star photo of celebrities in formal attire (figs. 2.10 and 2.11) there is an image of a Kirk Douglas or even Sartre on the beach (fig. 2.12). This informality reinforces the gay life that Morin identified but also goes beyond it to emphasize what the paparazzi became famous for— the unauthorized image.
If glamour functioned to present a sophisticated star, the Cannes images offset that with a certain natural and spontaneous style. In the early years, stars and filmmakers did stroll on the promenade, and photographers were as likely to catch them off-guard (see figure 2.13 of Bardot and older theater and film star Edwige Feuillere at a cafe) as they were to ritualistically photo
The CsiinM Film fcrtual
graph them at the staged photo shoots. In fact, the spontaneity of the Fes-tivai photography led to heightened concerns among stars that had something to hide. In a note from publicist Rupert Allan to Robert Favre Le Bret, Ulan suggests that Gene Kelly be hidden away at a less central hotel than die Carlton where photographers lurked day and night. As he explained to the Festival director, "Gene has a hair problem, which means that he must wear a cap or a headpiece for photos. This, in a way, presents a problem for him in Cannes with all the photographers around."36 But careful management of a studio-perfect image did not work here as it did in Hollywood. The Stars whose careers were made by Cannes were stars such as Brigitte Bardot, who basked in the spontaneity of the Festival events and its convivial atmosphere. A nineteen year-old starlet in 1953, Bardot's natural charm before the cameras at Cannes would make her the most famous woman of the decade.
Cannes played a crucial role in the career of Brigitte Bardot, who in turn played a crucial role in promoting the Festival. At her first Festival she was described as a "charming . . . young starlet" who was "so adorable."87 She had, in fact, just completed her first starring role that year in Willy Rozier's him Manina, whose English title is sometimes The Girl in the Bikini. The film's publicity materials underscored that the character lived a "free and almost wild life." This quality would become a key element of Bardot's style— happily repeated in the beach photos at the Festival.88 The crossover to the real beach in Cannes was thus not a big leap from the theme of Bardot's first dim. In that debut year at Cannes in 1953, she also had the good fortune to be photographed with one of the most famous stars in attendance, Leslie Caron, whom she knew from their days at dance school in Paris. Caron was by then on her own rise in Hollywood, having already starred in An American in Paris, and was present in Cannes with Lili, a film that received much positive response at the Festival.
tr ts never easy to explain why some are elevated from the ranks of starlets to become stars, let alone definitively explain the sort of phenomenal fame of someone like Brigitte Bardot. Yet, to consider her celebrity without attaching it to the photojournalism of the Cannes Film Festival misses a major element in both her meteoric rise and in the influence of the Festival on international film culture more generally. Bardot and her husband Roger Vadim mastered the Cannes-style photo by making even arranged photo sessions seem spontaneous. This sort of spontaneity became synonymous with the "acting" career of Bardot, but its quality and cultivation may well have
82
CHAPTER TWO
2.14 Kirk Douglas and Erigitte Bardot in the beach, 1953. Courtesy: Koba' Collection / Hawkins Bob.
been first developed for the still images of the shutterbugs on the beach at Cannes. Her early champions such as Francois Truffaut, writing when he was a film critic, noted, "she is founding a new movement in cinema."89 Yet rather than see this new style as emerging merely as a response to the stag-iness of the traditional French cinema, Vadim and Bardot first cultivated their "cinematic" style in relation to the photojournalism of Cannes. Outside of considerations of style, as Favre Le Bret wrote to Raoul Levy, the producer of Et Dieu crea lafemme (And God Created Woman), as if it were self-evident, "the Festival served as Mile. Bardot's launching pad from the start of her career."90 The Festival and its cosmopolitan culture advanced her career in a way that allowed her to emerge as an international superstar who wras clearly thought of as "French" at the same time.
The canny management of photojournalists at Cannes helped Bardot go from starlet to star. Photographers hung out on the beach and stars and starlets appeared in suitable lack ot attire to take advantage of the photo opportunities. While images such as figure 2.14 of Bardot with Kirk Douglas were
The Camus Him Festival
83
staged (in this case to promote his him Act of Love in which Bardot had a bit part), Bardot also had a knack for just showing up on the beach when the photographers were loitering waiting for people to shoot (fig.2.15).
If the Festival took its ''discovery" of certain films as a point of pride, starlet iconography served as the more popular visual equivalent of the hunt tor artistic talent. As Maurice Bessy, longtime film journalist who directed the Festival immediately after Favre Le Bret, observed in retrospect: "It was the era when young women, rather than recording an album wanted to get into films. They went to Cannes."91 The Festival, in short, became an international "Schwab's"—the drugstore on Hollywood Boulevard said to have launched a thousand careers. The fact that Bardot could rise from starlet status to superstardom encouraged photographers to lurk in search of other pretty young hopefuls. And careers were made. American Tina Louise, not long after her appearance at Cannes in 1962, became Ginger on Gillian's dand, a show on which she played, of all tilings, a starlet. But most of the voung hopefuls photographed remained nameless for posterity.
84
CHAPTER TWO
The starlet photos were part of the growing genre of the pin-up.92 The commodification of female sexuality may, in fact, have been as universal a language as film. The beach setting offered a seemingly legitimate reason for their state of relative undress. Fairly lax censorship laws and a long tradition of nudes and erotica in France encouraged risque photos. Variety noted about the Festival, "What's 'news' to a photographer? Girls, Girls, Girls."93 As the Saturday Evening Post reported of one starlet, "she is usually clad in the absolute minimum of clothing allowed by law, and that, in France, is two tiny wisps of fabric known as a bikini.... She will also do almost anything to get herself photographed."94 Since the launch of the bikini in 1946 by Cannes designers Jacques Heim and Louis Réard, the French reinforced their reputation as a sexually open society, and the photographers at the Festival used the occasion to sell these sexy photos around the world under the veneer of legitimate reporting, even of the racy monokini (figs. 2.16).
But starlet photos also provided an interesting critical commentary on motion pictures themselves. As a Life magazine headlined punned, "Lady, do you want to get in Pictures? You CAN at Cannes."95 If you couldn't get into "pictures" as in motion pictures, there was always the world of paparazzi photos. This starlet hunt reinforced still photography's importance to film, while highlighting the social and cultural hierarchy between the two photographic forms. The introduction of television at the same time as the Festival took hold as an important yearly image-fest added a third mode of photographic representation to the relation between still photography and moving photographic images.
The first postwar festivals were covered in fairly simple one-minute newsreels, which filmed the openings and closings or panned the Croisette and beach but did not offer visually distinctive coverage. These films were made by Gaumont and distributed worldwide through newsreel outlets. The filmed iconography of the Festival would find its great director under the tutelage of journalist Francois Chalais (fig. 2.17), who attended the Festival as a newspaper journalist from the start (and was then married to equally important journalist France Roche). His Reflets de Cannes, beginning in 1951, and then Cinépanorama (1956), a weekly film show broadcast by the French national station RTF, were essential elements in the spread of the Festival's public image.96 Like newsreels, Chalais' Re/lets captured the palm trees, the Palace, and the general ambiance of the Festival on film. Always set to jazzy music with an up beat and swinging tempo, his broadcasts emphasized the event's festive element. Like the still imagery, it featured many images of the
The Cannes Film Festival
beach and women in bathing suits. In fact, some members of the Festival 2.16 starlet in monokini, direction complained that Chalais emphasized the mondain and frivolous ljS5 c'jL,teby-FIF-qualities so much that he was giving the event negative press. As one organizer noted, 'This broadcast gives a false impression of the Festival, and can only do it a disservice in the eyes of, among others, the public servants who already think that it is consists of nothing but trifles and parties."97 Chalais' coverage particularly irked Festival organizers since they were supported in part by public monies and the government was also responsible for television. But ChaLais refused to be controlled by the subjects he covered. He responded to these complaints by reminding the organizers "I'm not here to be a Festival apologist."98 Chalais seemed far less the dupe of the Festival than most of the press corps, or at least he understood that the journalist had the right to represent the Festival as he or she wanted and not as the Festival did.
CHAPTER TWO
2.17 Francois Chalais and friend at the Festival. 1963. Courtesy: F1F.
Despite the complaints and defenses, the Reflets established its difference from the paparazzi and the newsreels in two ways. First, Chalais' team filmed not only the event being covered, but also the press coverage of an event. There are countless images of the photographers taking pictures in the television broadcasts; thus the television cameras filmed the subject of the photos and the subject being photographed at the same time. The television programs emphasized what could already be found in the still photographs, which often had trouble getting their subjects without photographing photographers as well. (See fig. 2.9, a shot of Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, as well as fig. 2.18 of Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren on the staircase with photographers lurking behind and in the center of the composi tion). The television camera's "eye" reveals the fabrication of the event as an event by showing the photographers at work. Television transmitted a sort of metacritical perspective—coverage and the coverage of coverage.'1'1
The Cannes Film Festival
2.18 Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren at the Festival. 1963. Courtesy: FIF.
Perhaps this is what bothered the Festival organizers, since it was their job to produce the event as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.
Chalais' shows also carved out the terrain of the celebrity interview in France. Like the imagery that seemed to underscore image making, Chalais' interviews often focused on celebrities. He interviewed most of the major figures that visited the Festival—although French-speaking stars were clearly at an advantage. Americans such as Jayne Mansfield, Mitzi Gaynor, and Dorothy Dandridge did not attempt to speak in French and were thus filmed in motion—on boats or dancing—to mitigate their mute status. For those who could speak, he prompted them to complain about the difficulties of celebrity and in so doing reveal their "private" selves. Sophia Loren explained that she had no more privacy because "you have to pay the price of celebrity."100 Brigitte Bardot pouted that "my life is a big prison," and Martine Carole explained that one's celebrity status "destroys your private
life."101 Some had more clever replies to his asking about the power of celeb rity. Simone Signoret reminded, him that if she had been truly powerful they would be doing the interview at a time she selected and not the reverse. Jane Fonda, with a fairly good facility with the language, underscored the fact that when the camera is on. an actor always acts—undercutting the charade that the Chalais interview would really bring audiences closer to those inter viewed.102 In sum, television coverage combined the spontaneity of the pa parazzi photos with an attempt to achieve greater intimacy. Yet, television differed from paparazzi photos in its more self-reflexive stance. It offered a discourse on image making rather than acting as just another medium for seamless representation.
Photo and television journalists cultivated the spontaneous image at Cannes and thus helped underscore the special cosmopolitan .space of the Festival. Only here would such international groupings of stars be possible (figs. 2.19 and 2.20). Riding in the convertible in figure 2.19 are the Italian Sophia Loren, the Frenchman Alain Delon and his girlfriend, the Austrian star Romy Schneider who had become a superstar in Europe in the wildly popular Sissi films. Figure 2.20 features French and American "twins'"— Rardot and Kim Novak. This iconography embedded American stars into a broader cosmos of stars from all over the world.
The Cannes images represent one of the Festival's signal qualities: the constitution of a film culture broader than Hollywood's. Yet, both Hollywood and the growing community of English-language independent filmmakers also attended in force, which the Festival organizers achieved through steady cultural diplomacy with film professionals rather than anv government. The Cannes organizers recognized the international importance of American product and people and sought to exploit its status. They trotted out the American presence like a prized pony: American participation in and endorsement of the Festival not only contributed to its success, but also suggested that the Americans felt they had something to gain by-coming to France.
Before the war, it had been the rejection of fascist propaganda that the Americans shared with the French and British, which resulted in their sup port of the Festival's creation in the first place. Despite the short life of the 1939 Festival, Philippe Erlanger wrote to the minister of education that "American film people, notably, have made it their business to assure the success of the event."103 Their attendance at Cannes helped re-establish the importance of France in the international film world. The story of the American participation offers a different sense of "film relations" between the two
CHAPTER TWO
communities than scholarship about quota battles narrates.104 Rather than taking any stance against Hollywood, the Festival organizers saw their role as promoting film in general and accepted that Hollywood's participation would enrich and enliven their event. In fact, when negotiations in Washington in 1954 threatened to prevent American participation in the Festival, Variety editor Abel Green reassured Favre Le Bret that this would not affect American stars from coming to the Festival. Although his position was probably incorrect, his reasoning is of interest: "the Franco-American breakdown on the film treaty... doesn't have any effect on Hollywood stars. After all, the American motion picture industry is an international industry and French-American relations are always of the highest."105
Explicit cooperation emerged from the first postwar Festival. In a message to the Festival organizers from Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA), he granted that "we Americans have much to learn from our talented colleagues around the world.... No people ever had a monopoly of talent."106 Perhaps such a disposition facilitated observations such as this from the executive secretaiy of the American Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences who attended the 1952 Festival: "I never encountered the supercilious dislike of Americans and American films which I had been warned I might meet at every turn. My experience was one of good-will and eagerness to narrow the inevitable breach caused by our quotas and business agreements."
Between 1946 and 1952, American participation appeared insufficient to some observers. The publisher and editor of the expatriate newsletter Ilrna's Paris Grctpeuine, American Viola lima, wrote to Dwight D. Eisenhower after the 1951 Festival and called the paltry American presence "an outright insult and disgrace to ourselves and to our hosts."107 The problem persisted the following year as evidenced by a report from the executive secretary of the American Motion Pictures Academy of Arts and Sciences: "the impression at Cannes was that the U.S. film industry had snubbed the Festival and had sent prints of whatever films were easily available; that we had not tried to present either our best pictures or a varied impression of life in the United States."108 This comment suggests some lack of mutual comprehension since An American in Paris, the winner for best picture of 1951, represented the United States, among other films that year.
The problem of perceived lack of interest on the part of the Americans seemed to disappear over time. Hollywood's most important film professionals, from its producers to directors, from its distributors to independent theater owners, started to make an annual pilgrimage to the Riviera. New
The Ciimies Film fVsciunl
York art-house theater owner and distributor Walter Reade wrote to Favre Le Bret noting, "many ol the theater owners of our country have been interested in [the Festival's] activity and its great international significance."10'1 Reade attended in order to buy the rights to show films from around the world in the United States. That the Festival facilitated the rise of foreign film exploitation in America is another variation on the two-way street of film relations. Even studio heads such as Spyros Skouras, president of Twentieth Century Fox, lauded the Festival in non-nationalistic terms:
My faith in the universally important good the Festival of Cannes performs to the benefit of the world industry is as steadfast as ever.... Providing as it does a mirror reflecting the best creative achievements of artists and craftsmen of so many countries, the Festival has assumed a public and world industry significance.... You have my own and my company's complete co-operation in the perpetuation of the purpose and objective of the Festival International du Film.110
Although muc ft has been made of the j ingoism associated wi th the "patriotic" efforts of the studios during the war and Hollywood's subsequent flooding of Europe with American films, their level of interest and cooperation in Cannes indicates a recognition of the key role played by the French-led Festival in its cultivation of film as a "world industry."
The Festival helped the American industry develop this broader outlook. Hollywood's participation was of the highest priority for the Festival's organizers who systematically cultivated their presence. As much as they wanted American films, they also wanted American personalities to attend in order to feed, in particular, the photographic corps that the Festival worked hard to gather. In a letter to Madame Georges Bidault (nee Suzy Borel), wife of the president and an attache at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (herself an organizer of the Festival in 1939), Favre Le Bret confided that "it is without doubt the participation of American stars and personalities who already have an international reputation has created an atmosphere that has furthered the Festival's success."111 The Festival organizers identified the Americans as key: "It must be admitted that it is thanks to the American participation that we have not only the best film selection but also the presence of big stars."112
Procuring the participation of American studios and stars was in part achieved by the yearly trip made by Favre Le Bret to the United States. He visited New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, meeting with the likes of Eric Johnston, Howard Hughes of RKO, Arthur Lowe of MGM, Luigi Luras-chi of Paramount, and "Elby" Mayer at his home i n Bel Air.113 He saw French
CHAPTER TWO
journalists such as Leo Sauvage, Le Figaro's New York correspondent, and French ex-pat director and writer, Robert Florey in Los Angeles.114 These trips also depended on two great Cannes friends in America: Rupert Allan, a publicist who had been with the MPEA (Motion Picture Export Association, originally known as the MPA) in Paris before moving to the West Coast in 1950 as the editor for Look; and Anne Buydens, a German-born, Belgian-raised, and Swiss educated "diplomatic hostess" who served as a protocol officer for the Festival after the war before marrying Kirk Douglas and relocating to Hollywood. During the 1950s and '60s, Allan and Anne Douglas voluntarily served as the central liaisons between the Festival and the American industry.
The Festival archives are filled with correspondence in which Allan and Douglas identify films and the stars that might accompany their films to Cannes. They seemed to pay careful attention to French-themed films in particular. After seeing Funny Face, Allan noted in a letter to Favre Le Bret, "I don't think any other film has ever paid such a tribute to Paris as it does," and suggested they procure it for the Festival.115 Douglas reported to Favre Le Bret that she had seen Can-Can, which was charming but not as good as Gigi, which they had screened two years earlier.116 Allan favored young starts, his logic evident as he explained to Favre Le Bret the selection of Mitzi Gaynor: "Mitzi is sure to get a great deal of publicity because of her cuteness, her animation, and enthusiasm, her amiability, and above all, she looks terrific in bathing suits!"117 The careers of Americans such as Kim Novak were launched at Cannes. Jayne Mansfield took advantage of the beach setting to show off her assets. Francophiles such as Edward G. Robinson, Kirk Douglas, and Gene Kelly, hairpiece or no, attended on several occasions. Rupert Allan's publicity stunt of introducing Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1955 at Cannes became the event around which the next year's festival was organized—the royal wedding in Monaco.
The presence of stars was easier to negotiate than that of the films. The subject of the exhibition of American films is a complicated one, which first needs to be embedded in a more general understanding of the Festival's film screenings. Both structural and aesthetic factors led to the selection of films destined for exhibition at Cannes. Most countries used national panels, usually composed of governmental film authorities, to select the films to be sent to Cannes. In the United States, the Motion Picture Association, working most closely with its Paris office, selected the American films to be sent. Over time, however, Favre Le Bret became involved in the selection of American films on his yearly visits. This set the precedent for what would, in 1971,
The Cannes Film Festival
become one of the Festival's major policy changes: the Festival selected the films and those films no longer represented a nation. There are several reasons why this shift happened. First, by the late 1960s, as Favre Le Bret noted, "It has become harder and harder to determine the nationality of films."118 The increase in coproductions in Europe (and Franco-Italian ones in particular), the decline of the Hollywood studios and its star system, and the rise of "auteurism" also started to brand films by director as opposed to nation. This development of cosmopolitanism within film culture was not just reflected in the Cannes program, it was a product of the internationalism of Cannes itself.
The Festival awarded prizes for the best film from each nation and with one overall international prize. Although categories of awards have come and gone over the years, the Palme d'Or was first awarded in 1955. But to study that award over time to establish some sort of pattern wouldbe futile, since the small group of around ten jurors changed from year to year and was always eclectic, not only in its composition but also in its tastes. Journalist France Roche cynically commented on the jury awards in 1957: "The jury did not judge quality. Its awards are a titration of politics, commerce and tourism. They give a small award to one, another small award to an-o ther and a big pri ze to the Americans to make sure in exchange they will get Hollywood stars the next year."119 Contrary to Roche's claim, America did not win a disproportionate number of awards and only won its first award for best film with Marty in 1955.
The initial jury was composed of a member from each exhibiting nation. The followingyear the jury was all-French, though its makeup shiftedagain until eventually returning to including as many non-French as French members. There were all-French film professional juries, international panels of cultural celebrities (academicians) such as jean Cocteauand Jules Romains. Eventually panels includedanincreasing number offilmstarsand directors. From the mid-1950s onwards, internationalism, glamour, and two and a half week availability guided the selection of members to the Cannes jury.
More salient to a discussion of "Cannes films" might be the kinds of films exhibited, especially once the Festival itself made those selections (which is beyond the scope of this study chronologically). Even then, it is critical to remember that production schedules and distribution deals contributed to what could be shown in Cannes, since Festival rules specified that films shown had to have their European premiere in Cannes. (Exceptions, however, were made to this rule. For example, in 1964, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg screened at Cannes and actually won the Palme d'Or, despite having already
CHAPTER TWO
been released in Paris. Protests abounded from interested parties in Italy, the Soviet Union, and Japan.)
Both the Festival leadership and the press valued films for their status as discoveries and revelations. Just as "discovery" marked the Cannes events discussed earlier—the spontaneous photo, the new star, the starlet who becomes a star—this quality marked film exhibition as well. Discovery could mean many things. Films could "discover" stars (Kim Novak); uncover new film aesthetics (neorealism and the New Wave); or reveal the work of filmmakers whose films had not previously been exhibited outside their own country. The Festival would "discover" such directors as the Indian Satyajit Ray, the Egyptian Youssef Chahine, and the Greek Michel Cacoyannis, major directors within their national and regional contexts, but largely unknown in the major film-producing nations such as France, Italy, England, and the United States. For American films, Cannes would discover modest budget character-driven films such as Marty, which went on to win the best picture of 1955, awarded in March 1956 after having won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May 1955.
Although films were not awarded prizes based on their likely success at the box office, potential commercial value certainly drove film selection in the first place. Films such as the Italo-French coproduction Black Orpheus-— set in contemporary Brazil during Carnival—exemplified the sorts of films favored by Favre Le Bret. Exotic, shot in a rich color palette, with a lively samba beat and untrained actors of color, it packaged the popular taste for spectacular color and music in the pretension of the classical tradition, since the story is that of Orpheus. Black Orpheus did, in fact, win the Palme d'Or and went on to great box office success (selling 573,496 tickets), making it the fifth most successful film at the box office in France between 1950 and 1963.120
If small nations might have benefited from the publicity machine at Cannes, what did the Americans gain by being there? There were obvious drawbacks: the Americans never believed they had enough films exhibited at Cannes because their level of world film production was so much greater than other countries. American producers feared that failure in competition might hurt a film's box office abroad, a segment of profits that was on the rise during this period. Yet the benefits outweighed these concerns: enormous press coverage; a cold-war inspired need to be present where and when the Soviets were in international cultural settings; and to present proof of their international cooperation to counteract accusations that Hollywood wanted to purge the world of foreign production.121
Tlie Cannes Film Festival
95
'There were economic incentives as well for every nation, but they were articularly appealing to American studios that struggled with French-nposed postwar quotas. In a brilliant move that helped guarantee the Fes-val high-quality dims from all nations, any films entered in the Festival
■ .?Lild not count against quota limits and $250,000 in profits from each him : ,:uld be repatriated directly back to the producer domestically instead of
<_ing frozen in European accounts. Ordinarily, the American studio profits France stayed in French accounts in order to stem the flow of dollars out Europe. Five American films shown at the Festival could mean as much •s s t.25 million dollars back to the States. At times, the Americans screened alms such as Gigi and Around the World In Eighty Days, but refused to enter .hem in the competition to avoid risking the reputations of these big in-..^tments.
For these occasions, the Festival created the hors competition category de-.:■ ted mostly to blockbusters because their scale would allow, "especially for .ypening night, an opportunity for extra-cinematic events that would likely d to the Festival's glitter."122 This privileged forum of the film screened ".rside the competition became an essential part of the Festival and inched such blockbusters as Ben Hur (1959), Exodus (i960), and Doctor Zhivago :co5). In this way, the Festival fostered what might be called the "interna-: dial" film of the late fifties and to the mid-sixties—massive, international
■ 1 star co-productions such as Around the World in Eighty Days, The Leopard, . vodus, The Fall of the Roman Empire, The Fabulous Aduentures of Marco Polo, .." d Doctor ZhirJtKjo, which played at the Festival, and such popular series as
c Pink Panther and James Bond films which constituted a popular, cosmo->litan international film.
rloilywood acknowledged the Festival's importance, and the Festival . ew that without American film there could be no "international" Festi-tJ. This cooperation emerged because of a shared affinity between the Fes-v-ai organizers and the Americans: the French film community grasped iid promoted the commercial quality of films as much as they valued art-! ry, Time and again, Favre Le Bret and his team underscored their commit-- ent to film as reflecting popular taste and felt they should never abandon hat stance. The notion that the Cannes film is an "art" film is a function of v. things: the prizes ended up being eclectically awarded to many non-rnmercial films while Cannes' blockbusters played outside the competi-'.n. Increasingly, non-American film was associated with noncommercial .n. Because Cannes showcased international film, it has been seen as pro-...oring art film. Quite the reverse is the case; the Festival organizers cared
CHAPTER TWO
deeply about promoting commercially viable films not only from the United States, but also from all over the world.
The Festival proclaimed itself at once concerned with art and commerce. In a summary written by the Festival directors describing its significance to the new minister of culture André Malraux, they noted, "It is undeniable that the Festival serves both the cinematic arts and industry."123 From its conception, the Festival favored the logic of production: the number of films exhibited per nation was proportional to the number of films produced in each country yearly. Thus, film production trumped both quality and diplomacy. The organizers did not see quality and popularity as necessarily in conflict. As the Festival organizers noted in 1958, "One of the reasons for the Festival's success is that the direction has always been as liberal and eclectic as possible, not limiting its choice to a few esoteric films whose qualities could not be appreciated by a large audience."124
The quality/commerce debate emerged early in discussions of the Festival's films. In 1951, journalist Simone Dubreuilh mockingly defended film festivals as gatherings where qualities other than commercial potential mattered. As she put it, "without festivals, the Temple merchants would not have their yearly moment of disinterest," as if to say that the competition at least encouraged the consideration of artistic merit.125 Marxist film critic and scholar Georges Sadoul as early as 1949 pronounced that it was "once a glorious festival which has become a publicity fair used exclusively to promote commercial products and casinos."126 André Bazin, more interested in the development of "film art," complained as early as 1949 that the Festival had lost its soul to commercial interests.127 Yet defenders of the Festival responded with vigor. Roger Vadim argued that the importance of festivals inhered in the very juxtaposition of art and commerce at the heart of film: "festivals orchestrate a commercial and artistic movement that benefit cinema, it seems to me that they offer a practical interest for the seventh art."128
Some critics may have been interested in the discourse of cinematic quality (on which their existence depended), but those who produced the Festival and the thousands who attended and who reported on it (film critics aside) did not separate quality from the development of the industry. Favre Le Bret articulated this philosophy in a letter to John McCarthy, vice president of the Motion Picture Association: "The strict goal of the Festival... is to facilitate, by virtue of the comparison of the best films from all over the world, a focus on world-wide production that invigorates the film industry while helping to advance the artistic evolution of film."129 In the late 1960s when the Venice festival had fallen on hard times, Favre Le Bret
rlwCaHHSS Film Pestitwd
micnted that the problem was the Venice festival's "intellectualism." Al-■ ugh he noted that this approach was, without doubt, commendable, he insisted it was "more appropriate tor a conference, of the cine-club va-.; / than for a festival which, after all, contains the term 'fete' within it,"130 ice, to the Cannes organizers, became known as the "cine-club de luxe," ;.ich amounted zo calling it a high-end film appreciation circle.131 By eon-nt, commerce and popular film remained the guiding principles of the ;±nes Festival's organizers. This open door policy toward commercial film made the spontaneous ^velopment of the world's largest film market possible. Cannes was no >.:e highbrow film exhibition; it was centrally engaged in promoting the idustry. The Festival nor only promoted films from all nations but also be-■•:me an international marketplace for film. As the Festival organizers noted s early as 1948, "virtually side by side with the Festival is a real and true film mirket"'32 This market took many forms. Some producers rented out the-•. ;ers in town to screen movies that had not been entered in the competition ,: ecause the number of film professionals in attendance at the Festival offered unprecedented exposure to distributors and other film professionals :;cm around the world. Movies were bought and sold at cafes, on the beach, and at parties. The market business increased to the extent that the organizers wondered whether they should integrate the unofficial market activity into dieir official domain as part of the Festival's sanctioned events. As the American participant reporting to the Academy in 1952 noted, "the Festival is an excellent showcase for the best wares currently available in the world film market," and he urged Americans to participate even more.133 The "market" developed in and along the movie theaters on the rue d'Antibes where films were screened. Deals were struck in bars, cafes, on napkins and with handshakes before being written up. In 1953, the market did twice as much business as the prior year. In 1955, one source estimated it did about one and a half million francs of business; by 1957, the market was thought to generate two million francs in film trade.134 Eventually, the market came under the Festival's official sponsorship in 1959 and is an important indicator of the Festivals central role in the economics of the world film market. By 1965, Newsweek noted rather matter-of-factly that the Festival was "the movie world's biggest commercial event with 35% of the year's films dealt at Cannes."135 Long before Miramax struck gold in 1989 at Cannes with Sex, Lies a.nd Vidcctape, producers such as Carlo Ponti and Raoal Levy made fortunes buying and selling dims there.1 ;e As the Festival organizers noted in the late fift ics,"the Festival owes its success to its commercial value____it is
CHAPTER TWO
a real stock exchange of film."137 The French weekly L'Express reported that business was so big that "the number of deals struck at Cannes would suffice to keep the movie business afloat for ten years."138
The film market developed in part, as Festival organizers grasped, because the particular geography of Cannes turned the resort into une cite' du cinema: the dense cluster of hotels, the Promenade de la Croisette and the beach made for excellent and easy encounters among film professionals who sought to conduct the business of buying and selling films ahead}' made or developing projects and deals.139 As the American delegate remarked in 19 59, "the primary purpose of the Cannes Film Festival is as much to get film people together from all parts of the world as it is to show the top films."140 Of the thousands of people who descended on Cannes for the Festival's two weeks, the overwhelming majority were members of the film community. Professionals and journalists so dominated the event from the start that the local authorities in Cannes complained that all the seats to the films were already given away: "To attract tourists, you can't only promise them the possibility but also the reality of actually attending the films."141 Edgar Morin summarized it best: "The purpose of a festival is to commercialize that which is aesthetic and aestheticize the commercial."142
By the mid-1960s, the Festival in Cannes had firmly established itself as the major yearly crossroads of the world film community. While the Festival may have helped French film and certainly played a key role in the emergence of the French New Wave, the event itself also facilitated the internationalization of film culture. The Festival combined the market exchange with rhetoric about the international advance of film culture and the press glitz of a galaxy of movie stars in bathing suits by day and turned out in formalwear by night.
But because of film's peculiar and privileged status in relation to the real world as represented in films, the Festival also created more than a global filmmaking community. As a Brazilian newspaper celebrated in 1951, "we have spent these weeks in a splendid spectacle of universal humanity from the four corners of the world with these sixty films; its spirit, its customs, ways of life, of thought."143 The Festival appeared to re-present the world itself through the films shown and talked about. Although the very success of the Festival in Cannes spawned other film festivals, thus creating the festival circuit of today as its direct legacy, it was a vital force in developing the postwar internationalization of film. Rather than hardening national identity through international contests, the Festival eventually broke down its own rules of competition between nations in order to achieve its self-professed
The Games Film Festiufll
goals of presenting a cosmopolitan smorgasbord of films. In so doing, [ hope to have shown that "it was so French" to claim that France could, would, and should be the logical host to such an international event.
Yet, the cooperation between Festival organizers and Hollywood and the press delivery of the cosmopolitan spectacle they orchestrated forces us to reconsider postwar Franco-American film relations. By privileging stories or competition and conflict, we have missed the Franco-American film partnership that formed a cornerstone in the emergent "international" film culture of the postwar era. If institutions such as the Festival in Cannes em-bodied this new film culture, it fostered two significant elements of the emergent global film culture of the late 1950s and 1960s. The first was the seismic eruption of Brigitte Bardot to international celebrity that reveals a great deal about the France-America connection. The second was the development of the international system of coproduction that generated the cosmopolitan film cycle, which took off after the record-breaking success of the film based on a late nineteenth-century novel by the Frenchman Jules Verne and made by an American "showman" Mike Todd, Around the World in Eighty Days. It is to these "bastard" children of the Cannes Film Festival we now turn.
214
NOTES    TO    PAGES 57-61
CHAPTER TWO
1. MAE, Qjiai d'Orsay, Relations Culturelles, Cinema, 6-8, n. 7, Brochure (1945-47).
2. There are no scholarly treatments of the history of film festivals in general. See Kenneth Turan, From Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) for a chatty memoir. On Cannes, see a fine overview, Cari Beauchamp and Henri Behar, Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival (New York: William Morrow, 1992). After completing the research and writing of this chapter, Loredana Latil's book, Le Festival de Cannes sur la scene internationale (Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions, 2005) was published. She unfortunately, did not have access to the festival archives at the BIFI, which are cited extensively below, and which would have provided her with a much better view of the festival as an institution. An even more recent doctoral dissertation completed after this book and written without access to the Cannes Archives is Marijke de Walk, Film Festival History and Theory of a European Phenomenon that Became a Global Network (University of Amsterdam, 2006).
3. See Brian Mackenzie, Remaking France: Americanization, Public Diplomacy and the Marshall Plan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
4. See Jens Ulf-Moeller, Hollywood's Film Wars with France: Film Trade Diplomacy and the Emergence of the French Film Quota Policy (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001); John Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles/or Mastery of the Global Film industry, 1920-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Jacques Portes, "A l'origine de la legende noire des accords Blum-Byrnes sur le cinema," Revue d'htstoire moderne et confemporairte 33 (avril-juin 1986): 314-29.
5. Toby Miller, ed., Global Hollywood (London: BF1, 2001).
6. Bibliotheque du Film, Archives du Festival International du Film, box 856 (1939}. Hereafter, BIFI FIR
7. BIFI, IDHEC, FES 235. Note by Georges Huisman, 1957.
8. Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Nantes. Archives des Echanges Artistiques, n. 930, Brochure, 1939, Festival International de Film. Hereafter MAE, Nantes, ADEA.
9. Archives Municjpales de Cannes, 2R65, July 30,1939.
10. Maurice Bessy, Cinemonde, August 30,1939.
11. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 933, mars 1964. Opening text for twenty-fifth anniversary.
12. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930. Letter from Georges Husiman to Jean Zay, November 10, 1939-
13. Archives Municipales de Cannes, 2R66. Letter from Philippe Erlanger to Pierre Nouveau, December 6,1939.
14. Archives Municipales de Cannes, 2R66. Letter from Pierre Nouveau to Philippe Erlanger, December 9,1939.
15. Archives Municipales de Cannes, 2R66. Letter from Georges Prade to Pierre Nouveau, January 17,1940.
16. Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat (New York: Norton, 1968).
17. See Colin Crisp, The Classic French Cinema, 1930-1560 (Bloomington, Indiana, 1993); Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, Le Cinema desfrancais: 15 ans des annees trentes, 1929-1944. (Paris: Stock,
NOTES   TO   PAGES 61-64
1983); and Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit, Le cinemafran^ais sous Vichy. Les films fran^ais de 1940 a 1944 (Paris: Revue du Cinéma/Albatros, 1980).
18. BIFI, FIF 857. Letter from the Action Artistiques to the Secretaire d'Etat a 1'Education Nationale et la Jeunesse, October 16,1941.
19. BIFI FIF 857. In a note dated November 10,1941, the comte, upon a return from Vichy, advocated for a spring 1942 event that would not be a "festival" but an "exposition international du Film" that needed to look independently instead of governmentally organized.
20. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 105. Erlanger was descended from hoth the Comte de Camando and the Rothschilds, prominent Jewish families. Note an the reintegration of Philippe Erlanger, Conseil d'Administration of the Association Francaise d'Action Artistique, December 6,1944. During the war, Erlanger's secretary general held his position of director general. What happened to Erlanger during the war is still unclear, although his apartment was pillaged and occupied according to the document of reintegration. In 1946, by virtue of an agreement between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) and the Ministry of Education, the AFAA became known as the Service des Echanges Artistiques under the auspices of the Directeur Generále des Affaires Culturelles of the MAE.
21. MAE, Quai d'Orsay, Relations Culturelles, 1945-47, 0-7-1 Cinema, December 18,1944. Note attached to report from O. Baueur concerning "une cite cinematographique Hollywood European."
22. MAE, Quai ďOrsay. Relations Culturelles, 1945-47,0-7-1 Cinema. Letter from Henry Gendre to Pierre Souchon, April 18,1945.
23. MAE, Quai d'Orsay, Relations Culturelles, 1945-47, D.7.1 Cinema. Note from the director general of cultural relations, MAE to the director of Europe, MAE, June 25, 1945, which says as much. M. Robert Bichet, Le Festival international de film. Conference de Presse, October 18,1946.
24. The participants were France, the United States, the Soviet Union, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Egypt, Belgium, Holland, Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, Turkey, China, Chili, Portugal, and Australia.
25. BIFI, FIF 857. Press release, 1945.
26. The Blum-Byrnes Accords have been the persistent fixation of French-American film historiography in postwar Europe. Essentially, the agreement prevented the imposition of any limits on American films imported into France although they did guarantee the French 30 percent screen time. See Colin Crisp, The Classic French Cinema (London: i. E. Tauris, 1993).
27. BIFI, IDHEC Fes 180, France illustration, September 21,1946.
28. Leon Moussinac, "Une ěre nouvelle commence," Vécranfranqais, September 18,1946.
29. Emmanuel Ethis, Aux marches dupalais.Lefestival sous le regard des sciences societies (Paris: La Documentation Francaise, 2001), p. 237.
30. For the earlier period, see Miriam Hansen, Babe! and Babylon: Spectactorship i?i American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
31. René Jeanne and Charles Ford, "Grandeur et decadence du 7e art," Mercure de France (August i960): 675; article found in MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930.
32. BIFI, fif 857, various documents.
33. BIFI, FIF 910, "Note sur le 6e festival," no date.
216
NOTES   TO   PAGES 65-69
34. Archives Munkipales de Cannes, 93 wi8,1956. "Reflexions du IXeme Festival International du Film."
35. Variety, September 17,1947, p. 4 and 18.
36. National Archives. College Park, NARA, RG 84, November. 16, 1951. Foreign Service Dispatch 1328. American Embassy in Paris.
37. Conseil d'Administration (hereafter CA), FIF, October 14, 1952, in CAC 960010128 (CNC 1689).
38. BIFI, FIF910. Rapport 1953.
39. Variety, May 9,1956.
40. Variety, May22.1957.
41. Toni Howard, "Whindig of the Movie Queens," Saturday Evening Post, May 18,1956.
42. BIFI, FIF 963, CA FIF, July 1,1959.
43. BIFI, FIF 856. Press release, c. 1939.
44. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930, FIF CA, July 1,1959, "Notes surle festival."
45. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930, February 24,1959.
46. BIFI, FIF 879, October 6,1949.
47. Herrick Library, Cannes Files. Report of the Executive Secretary, Motion Pictures Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1952.
48. Archives Munkipales de Cannes, 93 W181956, March 22,1956.
49. Brian Mackenzie, Remaking trance: Americanization, Public Diplomacy and the Marshall Plan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005).
50. Cari Beauchamp and Henri Behar, Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival (New York: William Morrow, 1992). In fact, Cannes and Beverly Hills became sister cities in 1986.
51. Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1515 (New York: Oxford University-Press, 1973).
52. BIFI, FIF 857,1946.
53. CAC 760010/28; CNC 1689, FIF, CA, June 11,1953.
54. UniFrance infos, n. 9, April 1951, p. 13.
55. Kenneth Silver, Malcing Paradise: Art, Modernity and the Myth of the French Riviera (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001).
56. During the earliest part of the war, director Jean Renoir promoted the formation of a studio in the unoccupied zone in Valbonne, only miles from Cannes. A photocopy of a letter oddly placed among the festival's archives (fif Box 857) from Renoir to Georges Prade dated October 8,1940, makes clear that months after the formation of the Petain government, Renoir was busy planning the future of French cinema rather than planning his departure from France. The future of French cinema, he argued, would distinguish itself from American cinema by shooting real exteriors in the new studios they were to set up in Valbonne. Even more provocative than his clear articulation of how a French cinema would differ from its American competition is his advocacy of establishing what would be the better business practices of the studios in the south of France: "What a terrific opportunity to finally eliminate all the scheming of the movie business (black marketeering in stars, technicians and extras, production loans, advances) and the idiocies that have infected French cinema). All the trashiness is linked to the fact that we filmed in Paris; at Valbonne, we'll have longer days, we'll gain time and we'll also gam moral and physi-
NOTES   TO   PAGES 69-76
217
cal health," Renoir's criticism of the film business here seems reformist enough even if the language of moral and physical reform oddly echoes some of what would be Petain's proto-Fascist talk of a healthier nation. But it is later in his letter that the great leftist champion shows his own stripes in what at the time would not have even seemed like a veiled anti-Semitic remark: "We are very ambitious and we know it. We also know that in Paris our ideas of purity and grandeur are quickly beaten down to the benefit of the hustlers of Fouquets and other places who are possibly less numerous (now) but whom 1 can't believe have disappeared entirely." Basically, with the corrupt Jews gone, people like Renoir would revitalize the French film industry.
57. This is noted in Silver, Mailing Paradise, pp. 86-100.
58. Alexandre Astruc cited in Claude-Jean Philippe, Cannes, le festival (Paris: Nathan Sipa, 1987).
59. Pierre Meunier, May 12,1952; Agence France Presse in Arsenal, 4SW12776, p. 23-24.
60. BIFI, FIF 899. Article by Yves Bridault in Arts, 24 avril, 1952.
61. The television coverage, which displays many of the photographers, shows that the press was in black tie as well.
62. See Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America (1961; New York: Vintage Books, 1992}.
63. The story of May 1968 at Cannes is an interesting one. The young New Wave directors fought the festival administration to shut down in sympathy with events in Paris. The festival administration and many film critics were violently opposed to this on the grounds that the festival was an international event and to shut down meant being provincial. Violent disruption of a screening led the leadership to change its mind. The festival was halted after only a few days and reorganized the next year in the wake of the renovations of culture more generally in 1968. See various files, BIFI, FIF, P112-239,1968. See also Sylvia Harvey, May 68 and Film Culture (London: BFI, 1981).
64. BIFI, FIF 1033,1966. Letter from Favre Le Bret to Francpise Giroud, May 19,1966.
65. BIFI, CA, FIF 1033,1966.
66. BIFI, FIF, 1033,1966
67. These numbers are pieced together from a variety of sources within the festival archives. To underscore the relative significance of press coverage at Cannes, Venice in 1961 had 229 journalists in attendance. Nathaniel Golden report of La Mostra, Aug. 30-Sept. 3,1961 in BIFI, FIF 991-
68. Tribute from Frangois Chalais to Louisette Fargette, May 16, igg2, documents courtesy of Louisette Fargette, Interviewed July 15, 2003, Paris.
69. Herrick Library, Cocteau as cited in BFI "Newsletter," June 1953, n. 223, v. 20.
70. This ritual suggests the title for a recent sociological study of the festival: Aux marches du palais: Le Festival de Cannes sous le regard des sciences sociales, under the direction of Emmanuel Ethis (Paris: La Documentation Francaise, 2001). There is an essay on the staircase ceremony in the volume by Pascal Lardellier that explores the ritual but does not sufficiently account for the role photographers played in the design of the Palais.
71. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 933. "Rapport Moral duXVII festival" (1964).
72. BIFI, FIF 972. Nathaniel Golden, report on the Cannes Film Festival, 1959.
73. For a short history, see Pierre-Jean Amar, Le Phorojournalisme (Paris: Nathan Universite, 2000).
NOTES   TO   PAGES   7 6 - S 5
74. Toni Howard, "Whindig of the Movie Queens." 75- Ibid.
76. BIFI, F1F, CA, January 31,1953, and also CAC760010/2S.
77. BIFI, FIF 952, CA, January 24,135s.
78. BIFI, FIF 941, January 31,1957. Favre toj. L, Jeauffre (controleur de tat).
79. BIFI, FIF 943, Frances Knecht, "Real Festival 011 Cannes Staircase," Globe and Mail, May it, 1957.
80. Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI. 1979).
81. See the recent English translations: The Cinema or Imaginary Man, trans. Lorraine Mortimer and The Stars, trans. Richard Howard, foreword by Lorraine Mortimer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
82. Edgar Morin, "Notes pour une sociologie du festival de Cannes,"Les temps modernes (June-July 1955): 2273-84; p. 2273.
83. Ibid., p. 2274.
84. Ibid.
85. The most significant analyses before Morin were the much more negative interpretations by Horkheimer and Adorno and Leo Lowenthal in the 1940s. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," The Dialectic o/£n!iahtenment (New York: Continuum, 1972), 123-71; and Leo Lowenthal, "The Triumph of Mass ldols,"Iitcramre,FopularCu!turc and Societu (1944; Palo Alto: Pacific, 1961), 109-40. For excellent histories of celebrity, seeLeoBraudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebriti/ in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and P. David Marshall, Celebritu and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University ol Minnesota Press, 1997). For histories of film stardom, see especially, Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI, 1979), and Richard de Cordova, Picture Personalities; The Emergence of the Star System in America (Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1981).
85. BIFI, FIE 967. Letter from Rupert Allan to Robert Favre Le Bret, April 3,1959.
87. le Figaro litteVaire, April 25,1953.
88. UmFrnnceFiim infos, October 1952, n. 20, p. 22
89. Francois Truffaut, Arts 619 (15-21 mai 1957).
90. BIFI, FIF 954. Letter to Raoul Levy from Favre Le Bret, April 8,1958.
91. Emmanuelle Decaix and Bruno Viller, "Interview of Maurice Bessy," Cinematographs, n. 58 (1980): 4-8.
92. See André Bazin. "The Entomology of the Pin-Up," in What Is Cinema? ed. and trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
93. Variety, May 13,1959.
94. Toni Howard, "Whindig of the Movie Queens."
95. Life 52, June 15,1962.
96. They also offer another look at French film culture that is different from the cinephilic discourse of the Cahiers du cinema. The shows are not accessible in their entire run and ii made available would afford an excellent set of documents to study. I would like to thank Christine Barbier-Bouvet of the Inathěque for helping me gain access to theChalais mate rials.
97. BIFI, FIF 1040, CA, June 13,1.967.
NOTES   TO   PAGES   8 5 - 9 G
219
98. BIFI, FIF9i9,May 10,1955.
99. See Elihu Katzand Daniel Dayan, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
100. Reßets de Cannes, interview with Sophia Loren, s.d., from C camme cinema, Cannes, Chalais (1997) documentary produced by Mei Chen Chalais and Remy Grumbach, Inatheque.
101. Reflets de Cannes, interview with Brigitte Bardot, s.d. (probably 1955) from Ccomme cinema, Cannes, Chaiais.
102. interview with Signoret, Reflets de Cannes, May 2,2959; interview with Fonda, 1963, from C comme cinema, Cannes, Chalais.
103. BIFT, F1F 855, Sept. 17,1939.
104. See Jacques Portes, "Les origines de la legende noire des accords Blum-Byrnes sur le cinema," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 33 (April-June 1986): 314-29, and Jens-Ulff Mueller. Hollywood's Film Wars with France.
105. BIFI, FIF 914- Letter from Abel Green to Favre Le Bret, March 2,1954.
106. BIFI, FIF 863. Message from Eric Johnson to the Festival, 1946.
107. NARA, RG 59 511.51/5-1551; Letter from Viola lima to Dwight Eisenhower, April 27,1951.
108. Herrick Library, Cannes Files, 1952, "Report of the Academy Executive Secretary."
109. FIF 926, March 25,1955.
110. FIF 945, April 18,1957.
111. BIFI, FIF 914. Letter from Favre Le Bret to Madame Georges Bidauft, MAE, November 18, 1953-
112. BIFI, FIF, 919, Notes sur le seme festival (1955).
113. Hughes owned RKO until 1955 when he sold it to Desilu. I do not know if Favre Le Bret visited him after the sale of the studio.
114. See, for example, BIFI, FIF 906,1953. List of contacts and visit for Favre Le Bret's trip to ihe United States.
115. BIFI, FIF 945. Letter from Allan to Favre Le Bret, March 25,1957.
116. BIFI, FIF 978. March 18, i960.
117. BIFI, FIF 936. Letter from Rupert Allan to Robert Favre Le Bret, March 11,1956.
118. BIFI, FIF 1040, CA, March 23,1967.
119. Claude-Jean Philippe, Cannes :Le festival (Paris: Editions Nathan, SIPA, 1987), p. 46.
120. CAC 760010/40. Extrait du Film Francais, "Rendements de lere exclusivite ä Paris des grands prix des 10 derniers festivals de Cannes," s.d. Also in MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930.
121. Brian Mackenzie, Remaking France.
122. BIFI, FIF 1024, CA, March 25,1965.
123. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930. "Note sur le festival" to Malraux's cabinet, February 24, 1959-
124. MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930.
125. BIFI, FIF 881. Simone Dubreuiihin Liberation, August 9, 1951.
126. BIFI, IDHEC, Fes. 180. Georges Sadoul in Les Lettres/rancctises, September 15,1949.
127. Bazin cited in Cannes: 45 Years: Festival International du Film (New York: Universal MOMA, 1992), p. 9.
128. BIFI, IDHEC, Fes. n. 238. Roger Vadim, "Cannes peut sauver le cinema," Arts (May 14-20, i960).
129. BIFI, FIF 894. Letter from Favre Le Bret to John McCarthy, March 14,1952.
NOTES   TO   PAGES 97-104
130. BIFI, FIF1033. February 8,1966.
131. BIFI, FIF 1032. July 13,1966.
132. BIFI, FIF 869. July 194.8.
133. Herrick Library, Cannes File. Report from the Executive Secretary AMPAAS, 1952.
134. FIF, CA, June u, 1953 in CAC 960010128 (CNC 1689); Wice-Matin (April 17, 1956); MAE, Nantes, ADEA, n. 930.1958, "Note sur l'administration du festival."
135. Newsweek, May 30,1966, 84-85.
136. On Miramax, see Peter Biskind, Doum and Dirty Pictures Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 78. On Levy, see Jean Dominique Barby, Kaoul levy: Un aventurier du cinema (Paris: Jean-Clause de Lattes, 1995). For Carlo Ponti and other Italians, see Moritz de Hdealn and Stefano Delia Casa, Capitani coraggiosi:Produttori italidni (Milan: Electa, 2003), and Barbara Corsi, Con qualque dollaroin meno (Rome: Editori riuniti, 2001).
137. BIFI, FIF 944. "Rapport sur le 9eme festival" (1956).
138. Michele Manceaux, ^Express, May 2,1958.
139. BIFI, FIF 867, CA. June 9,1947, and FIF 864, "Rapport de 1947," respective!)'.
140. BIFI, FIF 972. Nathan Golden, "Report on the Xllth Internationa! Film Festival," June 19, 1959-
141. Archives Municipals de Cannes, letter to FIF from Assoc. Commerciale, Industrielle et Artisanale du Canton de Cannes, s.d.
142. Edgar Morin, "Notes pour une sociologie du festival de Cannes," Les Temps modernes, n. 114-15 (Juin-Juillet 1955): 2273-84; 2279.
143. NovaisTexeira, 0 Globo, May 7,1951.
1. Richard Ivan Jobs, Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after World War II (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers, 2002).
2. Susan Weiner, En/ants Ternbley. Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945-1968 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
3. James B. Twitchell, Lii'mtj ft Up: America's Love Affair with luxury (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003). This use of populuxe defines the term as a form of luxury product designed for mass consumption. The term refers to an aesthetic style associated with Southern Californian-inspired futuristic "Googie" architecture.
4. Charles Rearick, The French in Love and War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 131-38.
5. Simone de Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome foreword by George Arnberg (New York: Arno Press and New York Times, 1972), p. 6. Article originally published in Esquire Magazine 52, n. 2 (August 1959): 32-38. Translated by Bernard Fretchman. Citations are from the Esquire article.
6. Bardot lived several public lives. i concentrate on her film career but she also had an important run as a recording artist in France and later as an animal rights activist. See Chantal Nadeau, "BB and the Beasts: Brigitte Bardot and the Canadian Seal Controversy," Screen: The Journal of the Society for Education in Film and Television 37, n. 3 (1996): 240-50; and Ginette Vincendeau, Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (London and New York: Continuum, 2000).