Ignorance of a film can be bliss, says DONALD CLARKE

WHY ARE idiots like me always going on about Cannes? It’s just some stupid jamboree by the seaside. Isn’t it? I mean, we don’t hear you going on about your last holiday to Lahinch. We ought to shut up.

Each time we come to Cannes, however, we are reminded of certain undeniable reasons for recommending the event. The screenings are always immaculately projected. They start on time. Crane your head and you’ll see stars weaving their way along the red carpet.

There’s something else. In the modern era, it is extraordinarily difficult to walk into a film without already knowing something about the blasted thing. It wasn’t always the way. Before this internet thing arrived, you had to buy a film magazine to extract information about future presentations. A week before release you might read a feature in a newspaper. On the day of release the reviews would emerge. Obviously, if the film were a blockbuster like Star Wars or Jaws, you would have been salivating over newsprint for months. But most everything else came at you from your blind spot.

Over the past two days, your correspondent has enjoyed Moonrise Kingdom, the latest film from Wes Anderson, and Rust and Bone, the new piece from Jacques Audiard.

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that these films emerged from a gravity-free void. We know Wes Anderson from such fine movies as Rushmore and

The Royal Tenenbaums. A few years back, Monsieur Audiard stunned Cannes with A Prophet. Barring monsoons, Bill Murray will turn up in Moonrise Kingdom. A synopsis alerts us that Rust and Bone has to do with killer whales and their trainers.

Here’s the thing. Upon entering the cinema, we haven’t read a single word by anybody who has seen the films. No Tomatometer has kicked up a score. There is no “buzz” on the internet. We walk in as a timid virgins. Isn’t that the case when a critic attends a press screening? Not quite.

Consider Prometheus. For the last year, we have been absorbing trailers, sneak footage and set reports on Ridley Scott’s latest. There are still six months to go before The Hobbit hits screens, but punters are already arguing over the hyper-real nature of the film’s super-sharp cinematography.

Now, it goes without saying that the informed reader adores and appreciates (ahem!) the best writing on new cinema. But the avalanche of information on cinema – and politics and video games and bird-watching innovations – can become more than a little suffocating. By the time we get to see a film we are, to a certain extent, already calibrating and reassessing certain preconceptions.

As a result, one feels slightly daunted when confronted with a film that has played nowhere else and generated no meaningful echoes.

Ahh! I’ll have to make up my own mind.