It’s the most coveted film prize in the world. It’s awarded by the most august
film institution, decided by the most respected film-makers and given to the
most talented directors. It is, of course, the Palme d’Or, originally called
the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.
The Oscars may have the edge on triumphalism, but the Palme d’Or, the closing
highlight of the Cannes Film Festival, has something that Tinseltown gloss
can’t buy – namely, kudos.
While movie-watchers regularly contend that Academy Awards are given for
sentimental and populist reasons, the Palme d’Or is beyond reproach. Decided
in total secrecy by a jury of between 9 and 12 top-flight film people
(including actors, cinematographers and directors), the Palme d’Or is
awarded solely on the film-making merit of the movie under consideration.
The Bosnian director Emir Kusturica, the president of the 2005 jury, said:
“Unlike the Oscars, where someone who has been waiting for the award for 25
years gets it for a pretty bad film, it is very hard to get a Palme d’Or for
a film that is not good.”
Nonetheless, the award can be controversial. It is so coveted that the final
choice can often be highly contentious – hence the furore over the Pulp
Fiction win in 1994, or the cynical mutterings surrounding Ken Loach’s
win for The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Ultimately, the Palme d’Or is a vote of confidence from a film-making
community, but one that’s unlikely to bring the recipient instant commercial
success. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now win didn’t
exactly charm the Hollywood money men in 1979.
But still, film-makers as diverse as the Finn Aki Kaurismaki and the Hollywood
maverick Robert Rodriguez (his Sin City was an unlikely entrant in
2005) continually throw themselves into the ring, in an attempt to capture
that elusive Cannes kudos.
1939 Winner: Union Pacific Director: Cecil B DeMille FYI: DeMille’s
western spectacular was set to be the highlight of the inaugural festival,
yet Cannes was cancelled because of the untimely arrival of the Second World
War. Union Pacific, starring Barbara Stanwyck, received a
retrospective Palme in 2002.
1944 Hets [Frenzy] (1944) Alf Sjöberg MarÍa Candelaria
(1944) Emilio Fernández
1945 Die Letzte Chance [The Last Chance] (1945) Leopold
Lindtberg The Lost Weekend (1945) Billy Wilder Roma,
Città Aperta [Rome, Open City] (1945) Roberto Rossellini De
Rode Enge [The Red Earth] (1945) Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen Velikiy
Perelom [The Turning Point] (1945) Fridrikh Ermler
1946 11 winners: Brief Encounter (1945) David Lean Muzi Bez
Kridel [Men Without Wings] (1946) Frantisek Cáp Neecha
Nagar [Lowly City] (1946) Chetan Anand La Symphonie Pastorale
[Pastoral Symphony] (1946) Jean Delannoy
1947 No award
1948 Festival cancelled
1949 The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
1950 Festival cancelled
1951 Fröken Julie [Miss Julie] (1951) Alf Sjöberg and
Miracolo a Milano [Miracle in Milan] (1951) Vittorio de Sica
1952 Due Soldi di Speranza [Two Cents Worth of Hope] (1952) Renato
Castellani and The Tragedy of Othello: the Moor of Venice :
(1952) Orson Welles
1953 Le Salaire de la Peur [The Wages of Fear] (1953) Henri-Georges
Clouzot
1954 Jigokumon [Gate of Hell] (1953) Teinosuke Kinugasa
1955 Marty (1955) Delbert Mann
1956 Le Monde du Silence [The Silent World] (1956) Jacques-Yves
Cousteau and Louis Malle
1957 Friendly Pursuasion (1956) William Wyler
1958 Letyat Zhuravli [The Cranes are Flying] (1957) Mikheil
Kalatozishvili
1959 Orfeu Negro [Black Orpheus] (1959) Marcel Camus
1960 Winner:La Dolce Vita Director:Federico Fellini FYI:Fellini’s epic
homage to playboy journalism featured Marcello Mastroianni as a bed-hopping
hack, but is best remembered as the movie that coined the word “paparazzi” –
named after Mastroianni’s photographer buddy, Paparazzo.
1961 Viridiana (1961) Luis Buñuel and Une Aussi Longue
Absence [The Long Absence] (1961) Henri Colpi
1962 O Pagador de Promessas [Keeper of Promises] ) (1962) Anselmo
Duarte
1963 Il Gattopardo [The Leopard] (1963) Luchino Visconti
1964 Les Parapluies de Cherbourg [The Umbrellas of Cherbourg] (1964)
Jacques Demy
1965 The Knack . . . And How to Get It (1965) Richard Lester
1966 Signore & signori [The Bird, the Bees and the Italians] (1965)
Pietro Germi and Un Homme et une Femme [A Man and a Woman] (1966)
Claude Lelouch
1967 Winner:Blow Up Director:Michelangelo Antonioni. FYI: This
archetypal art-house succès de scandale featured full-frontal
nudity, rock-star cameos (step forward the Yardbirds) and Swinging London
stereotypes. It also inadvertently inspired the Austin Powers comedy
franchise.
1968 Festival cancelled
1969 If . . . (1968) Lindsay Anderson
1970 MASH (1970) Robert Altman
1971 The Go-Between (1970) Joseph Losey
1972 Il Caso Mattei [The Mattei Affair] (1972) Francesco Rosi and
La Classe Operaia va in Paradiso [The Working Class Goes to Heaven] (1971)
Elio Petri
1973 The Hireling (1973) Alan Bridges and Scarecrow (1973)
Jerry Schatzberg
1974 The Conversation (1974) Francis Ford Coppola
1975 Chronique des Années de Braise [Chronicle of the Years of Fire]
(1975) Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina
1976 Winner:Taxi Driver Director:Martin Scorsese FYI:Though now
considered a classic, Scorsese’s violent account of the psychotic implosion
of a Vietnam vet, starring Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster, was largely
ignored during awards season. The Palme was one of the few it collected.
1977 Padre Padrone [Father and Master] (1977) Paolo and Vittorio
Taviani
1978 L’Albero degli Zoccoli [The Tree with the Wooden Clogs] (1978)
Ermanno Olmi
1979 Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola and Die
Blechtrommel [The Tin Drum] (1979) Volker Schlöndorff
1980 All that Jazz (1979) Bob Fosse and Kagemusha [Shadow
Warrior] (1980) Akira Kurosawa
1981 Czlowiek z Zelaza [Man of Iron] (1981) Andrzej Wajda
1982 Missing (1982) Costa-Gavras and Yol [The Way] (1982)
Serif Gören and Yilmaz Güney
1983 Winner:Narayama Bushiko Director:Shohei Imamura FYI: A
controversial winner. This modest tale of a 69-year-old widower facing death
in a rural Japanese community beat populist entrants such as Scorsese’s King
of Comedyand Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously.
1984 Paris, Texas (1984) Wim Wenders
1985 Otac na Sluzbenom Putu [When Father Was Away on Business] (1985)
Emir Kusturica
1986 Winner:The Mission Director:Roland Joffe FYI: An unusually
mainstream choice for Cannes. Under the guidance of the jury president
Sydney Pollack the Palme went to this star-studded costume epic about the
rape of 18th-century South America.
1987 Sous le Soleil de Satan [Under the Sun of Satan] (1987) Maurice
Pialat
1988 Pelle Erobreren [Pelle the Conqueror] (1987) Bille August
1989 Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) Steven Soderbergh
1990 Wild at Heart (1990) David Lynch
1991 Barton Fink (1991) Joel Coen
1992 Den Goda Viljan [The Best Intentions] (1992) Bille August
1993 Ba Wang Bei Ji [Farewell My Concubine] (1993) Kaige Chen and
The Piano (1993) Jane Campion
1994 Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
1995 Underground (1995) Emir Kusturica
1996 Secrets & Lies (1996) Mike Leigh
1997 Ta’m e Guilass [Taste of Cherry] (1997) Abbas Kiarostami
and Unagi [The Eel] (1997) Shohei Imamura
1998 Mia Aioniotita Kai Mia Mera [Eternity and a Day] (1998)
Theodoros Angelopoulos
1999 Winner:Rosetta Director:Jean Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne FYI: The
first of two Palme d’Or wins for the Dardenne brothers (the second was for
2005’s L’Enfant), Rosetta was about a trailer-park
teenager and showcased their penchant for combining hard-hitting social
realism with gloomy romanticism.
2000 Dancer in the Dark (2000) Lars von Trier
2001 La Stanza del Figlio [The Son’s Room] (2001) Nanni Moretti
2002 The Pianist (2002) Roman Polanski
2003 Elephant (2003) Gus Van Sant
2004 Winner:Fahrenheit 9/11 Director:Michael Moore FYI: Moore’s
Bush-bashing exposé of American antidemocracy in action received the longest
standing ovation yet at Cannes. The French press said it was 23 minutes
long, the BBC said 15 minutes. Either way, it was long.
2005 L’Enfant (2005) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
2006 The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) Ken Loach
Double Winners
Francis Ford Coppola: The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse
Now (1979) Shohei Imamura: Narayama Bushiko (1983) and
Unagi (1997) Emir Kusturica: Underground (1995) and
Otac Na Sluzbenom Putu (1985) The Dardenne Brothers: Rosetta
(1999) and L’Enfant (2005) Bille August: Pelle
Erobreren (1988) and Den Goda Viljan (1992)
The first Palme d’Or was awarded in 1955. Previously, winning
directors had been awarded the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film,
first awarded in 1939. The Grand Prix later reappeared in 1964 and remained
for a further ten years, until the reintroduction of the Palme d’Or in 1975.
Women In 1993 Jane Campion, the director of The Piano, which
starred Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel, became the first and only woman to
win the Palme d’Or.
Palme of Palmes The Palme of Palmes was awarded to Ingmar Bergman in
1997 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the festival.
