Woody Allen paid back a debt to the French public and critics by turning up, for once, at Cannes, writes Michael Dwyer
Film-makers succeed in making good movies in Hollywood despite of, rather than because of, the studio system, Woody Allen told a packed press conference at the 55th Cannes Film Festival yesterday afternoon.
The 67-year-old New York actor, writer and director was making his debut at Cannes with his new film, Hollywood Ending, which was shown as the opening presentation of the festival last night. The film features Allen himself as a washed-up former Oscar-winning director who gets the chance to make a comeback with a film shot in his beloved Manhattan.
However, in his anxiety, he becomes psychosomatically blind just as shooting begins - but nobody notices his blindness throughout the production.
Affirming that his storyline was a caustic commentary on Hollywood, Allen told the international media: "In Hollywood, films are calculated from a basis of venality. If a film turns out to be good, that's just a coincidence. So many Hollywood movies are uninspired because they are all trying to work out a formula to make the most amount of money for the least amount of work."
It was primarily an industry, he continued. "They've always been interested in nothing but money. It was the same in what we now know as the golden age of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. But most of the films from that era were bad, too - thousands and thousands of them. There were some good ones only because some directors fought the studios."
Although Allen's 1977 film, Annie Hall, won Oscars for best picture and best director, he always shunned the ceremony until this year, just as he did when Cannes screened many of his films in previous years.
Asked what has got him out of the house this year, he replied: "I went to the Oscars this year because so many of us want to do things for New York after September 11th, and they asked me to introduce a tribute to New York movies.
"And the French have been so supportive of my films for years and I have been invited to Cannes so many times that I felt it was time for a gesture of reciprocity. If it looks like I've had a religious conversion of some kind, I've not. I'll be back in the house again soon."
Allen, who left Mia Farrow after becoming involved with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, continues to have on-screen romantic relationships with much younger women in his new film.
"In love relationships it's difficult for people all over the world," he said.
"In a love relationship, regardless of age, race or gender, all that matters is that the two people have a happy, fulfilling time. And that's very rare."
Of the many frivolous questions directed at Allen, he looked the most perplexed when asked for his views on the French penchant for eating snails and frogs.
"It's the same as relationships," he said after a long pause. "Whatever works works. Much as I love French cooking, I could not eat frogs, snakes, vermin or dogs. But I guess it beats eating monkey's brains, which they do in some countries."