Cinema Canada (Jun-Jul 1977)

cannes To hear some tell it, Cannes was a dog show and Canada, the ill-behaved mutt which was fighting its way upward. For one such jaundiced view, read on... the year of the bourge by Ronald H. Blumer It is a curious chemistry of political and social ingredients which dictates what sort of films show up as official selections at Cannes. The subject and style of a film is ‘in’ one year and is as dated as the hula-hoop the next. Last year, ‘third world’ films were fashionable; next year maybe it will be art films. This year is the year of the bourgeois film — the decor films with pretty sets, neurotic people and fashionable ideas. So this year, the official films matched the fairyland atmosphere of the Riviera with its $3.00 ham sandwiches and $4.00 cocktails. The Riviera, of which Cannes is one tiny particularly vulgar outcropping, lives off three things: flowers, perfumes and tourists. There are no other industries although I read in a local newspaper that there are big plans afoot for the opening of a new research center on the mating habits of the butterfly. Cannes, like any other ocean vacation town has its crowded beaches, then the main drag — “La Croisette’”, — a row of huge hotels including the $100 a night Carleton and a train station. During the winter and spring it takes on the air of a floating old age home with pensioners from all over France strolling out to sit on the deck chairs (one franc) and to watch the bathers and the Mediterranean. There is really nothing all year to disturb this peaceful ebb and flow of people and money except for this crazy wild aberration of a film festival which bursts upon this sleepy vacation land bs p — e © __ionce a year, forty thousand strong. La Dentelliere, a Swiss film — one of the best — which you probably “It’s not a film festival, it’s a dog show!”” someone comwon’t see in your neighborhood theatre mented and indeed what was going on up and down the Croi sgt >? 24 / Cinema Canada