THERE'S A fantastic scene in The Great Escape(they're all fantastic, I know) at a railway station some distance from the prisoner of war camp. The escapees have been told to take different trains, but, following various muddles, they have all ended up on the same platform at the same time. There's David McCallum. There's Gordon Jackson. And so on.
The 10.50 flight to Nice on Wednesday morning felt a little bit like that. There’s a distinguished producer. There’s the director of a major film festival. There’s the programmer of an art-house cinema.
And here’s me. Everybody’s very nice to your correspondent, but I do sense a modicum of shock at the realisation that they are forced to share air with a 46-year-old Cannes virgin. In this company, you’d feel less ashamed owning up to being a middle-aged virgin virgin.
Anyway, being flung straight into the Cannes whirlwind is a jaw- rattling experience. Obviously, having seen the thing on TV for decades, you know to expect lots of people in tuxedos and the sight of enormous yachts on the horizon. (Who’s in them? Where are they going?)
What is surprising – though perhaps it shouldn’t be – is the strange, agreeable blend of the grandiose and the ever-so-slightly rickety. If Cannes took place in the US then, as a grand old institution, it would be so buffed and polished that it would have lost all character. Every banister would gleam and the ushers would take every opportunity to flash their orthodontics.
Now don’t get me wrong. From the moment the bus pulls up outside the l’Hôtel de Ville, it becomes clear you have arrived on some moon of the planet Splendido. Armies of officials in beige suits cluster around the red carpet and, everywhere you look, surprisingly smart-looking people hold hand-written signs requesting tickets to the busier events.
But just have a glance at the Palais des Festival. The building that hosts most of the events looks like a beached aircraft carrier on the outside and, within, resembles the sort of hotel you might have encountered in Poznan during the high years of the Soviet Bloc. The stairs are monumental, the inner vistas faintly Stalinist.
For all the undeniable glamour of Cannes, there is a sense of seriousness about the operation. Press screenings are scheduled for 8.30 in the morning and, by golly, they start on time. Maybe Maosim – after all, that was the doctrine that appealed to Godard – offers a better model for the festival than its Russian equivalent. You are not here to enjoy yourself. Pick rice. Build railroads. Review films.
