THE LIST OF THE MORNING
Since 1946, the Cannes Film Festival has distributed a hundred of these highest distinctions first in the form of a Grand Prix and then in the Palmes d’or. While the 73rd edition will not take place, the cinema section of World has selected eight award-winning films for eight decades of Croisette and the rise of the markets.
“Rome, an open city”, the invention of neorealism
It was the first Cannes Festival. It was to be held in September 1939 but was canceled due to the outbreak of war. Seven years later, after the catastrophe, the time has come for the affirmation of a desire for peace and global harmony. Each of the countries having presented a film in a competition, whose judges are themselves the representatives of their State, will be entitled to their grand prize. No less than eleven films are therefore awarded the award. For Italy it will be Rome, open city, by Roberto Rossellini.
What is the point of wondering about the relevance of an award guided more by diplomatic considerations than by the need for an artistic evaluation? The film has since a special place in cinema stories like the genesis (with Devilish Lovers, de Visconti two years earlier) of a new aesthetic movement that would bring the seventh art into its modern age. A film shot “hot”, in the streets of Rome barely released, retracing various episodes of resistance to the German occupier.
Rossellini, who came with Anna Magnani both to defend the film and above all to find him a French distributor, will tell for a long time that the projection of Rome, an open city in Cannes took place in an empty room, with indifference and contempt for the Italian delegation. “We had it projected at the worst time, he will say, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, when everyone digests with half-closed eyes. “ We know that all this was a bit exaggerated. Jean-François Rauger
Film by Roberto Rosellini (1946). To see on MyCanal. DVD and Blu-ray (Films without borders).
“The Wage of Fear”, wetness and death
Las Piedras, everyone is coming down! In this South American village, a few Europeans have run aground on sticky paper. The sun bangs when it’s not raining downpours, it’s hot, they drink too much, get jealous, ready to do anything for a few dollars, barely less miserable than the natives in rags. Mario (Yves Montand) is one of them. Dapper and macho who becomes sweet like a first communicant when Jo (Charles Vanel, male acting award) arrives, an aging man, boastful and dressed in white linen.
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