So there are new films by Abbas Kiarostami and Michael Haneke in the competition? Big deal. Walter Salles’s version of On the Road is finally with us. Fair enough. But those blood-suckers among us are almost as excited by the appearance of the indomitable Dario Argento.
Tomorrow night, the Italian director of such horror classics as Suspiria and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage presents Dracula 3D in the main auditorium. Thomas Kretschmann plays the Count. Rutger Hauer is Van Helsing. Argento has been speaking about this surprising turn of events.
“I’d never been in the selection of this festival and, more importantly, horror had never made it in Cannes. I broke a dam,” he said in his shaky English. “It is violent and romantic, a man very changeable who wants blood, but also romance.”
Two of Argento’s old pals are also in the frame this year. Fans of the Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West cherish the stories of Leone, Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci’s adventures working on the vast script. Tonight a shiny new print of Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America will be unveiled while Bertolucci’s Io e Te screens out of competition next week.
Winner of an honorary Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes, Bertolucci is of course something of an old hand. Maybe he can show Dario where the loos are and where he can check his bag.
