Cannes
The History of Cannes
Lord Brougham, a former Lord Chancellor of
England is the person that is credited with "inventing" Cannes when he was
detained there while on a trip to Italy in 1834, because an order prevented him
from crossing the Var River to Nice. He liked the place so much that he built an
Italianate villa on a hill jut outside the town and persuaded his friends to
live there. His friends enjoyed the winters because the climate was so mild.
Other of his friends built homes and the village later became a
town.
Forty-five years later Cannes acquired many spacious villa almost
fifty hotels and a had a very good thriving market in house-and-estate building.
On the hundreth birthday of Cannes the citizen had made a statue of Lord
Brougham and celebrated with a week of festivities. Important members of Queen
Victoria’s court visited for some of the holidays. When these people arived the
citizens of Cannes would stop practicing some of their costumes such as carrying
the dead uncovered through the street for burial.
The Film
Festival
As time past more and more people became attracted to Cannes.
Famous stars of the 30’s came and decided to make a film festival in 1938. But
it wasn’t officially done until 1946. Internationalism and postwar optimism
characterized the first festival. In later years the selection of entries for
prizes reflected more commercial interests and the festival soon acquired its
current reputation as a fashionable professional event. By this time the
festival was more concerned with the advancing the film industry that the art of
film. Francois Truffaut addressed these issues in 1956 and the festival was
almost destroyed. The festival survived. In 1959, Traffaut was awarded the prize
for best screenplay for Les Quatre Cent Coups or The Four hundred Blows. Despite
the financial interest and the and political overtones the Cannes Film Festival
remains an essential showcase for international cinema.
The
Awards
Up until 1954, the jury of the Cannes Festival awarded a "Grand
Prix du Festival International du Film" to the best director. The prize-winners
of the "Grand Prix" and other main awards would receive the work of a
contemporary young painter or sculptor.
At the end of 1954, the
Festival's Board of directors decided to replace the "Grand Prix" with the
"Palme d'Or", in reference to the City of Cannes' coat of arms. Legend has it
that the original drawing of the palm leaf was done by Jean Cocteau. Reality is
more prosaic than the myth. In 1955, the Board of directors asked several
jewellers to present their projects of a palm leaf for the awards to come.
Lucienne Lazon was the winner of the contest. The project became the "Palme
d'Or", the highest reward given annually to the best director. Since then the
"Palme d'Or" has become the Festival's logo.
Originally, the palm's stem
rested on a heart-shaped pedestal made of a sculpture in terracotta by
Sébastien. Since the early 1980's the round-shaped pedestal has been
progressively transformed and by 1984 took the shape of a pyramid.
In
1992, Thierry de Bourqueney redesigned the palm leaf, placing it on a
hand-carved crystal pyramid. The "Palme d'Or", presented in a red morocco casket
with white suede lining, is given to the prize-winner during the awards
ceremony. The "Palme d'Or" is the most valued and long-awaited of all the Cannes
prizes and is announced at the end of the ceremony.
On occasion the
"Palme d'Or" award has been shared by two directors, as was the case in 1961
with Luis Bunuel's "Viridiana" and Henri Colpi's "Une aussi longue absence", and
more recently in 1993, for Jane Campion's "The Piano" and Chen Kaige's "Farewell
to my Concubine".