CANNES' RIB: HOW "LA CROISETTE" CREATED THE WOMAN (AND THE OTHER WAY AROUND)

Do you know that weird feeling of "gee I wish I would have thought of this myself"? Well, that's exactly how I felt reading the article And Cannes created woman on the online version of The Independent. How could I not have thoutgh about posting something on the subject on our very own women-in-film oriented blog? I wonder what possesed me. However, thank God our very thoughtful friends at the British paper were sharp enough to point out that nothing better than the long line up of female stars on "La Croisette" summarises the 60 years of history of the father of all glamour struck Film Festivals.

As the Cannes Film Festival starts tomorrow and I will be en-route to this next two weeks Cinema's belly botton, after reading the piece I went on a web-hunt for video/photo material on the subject, just to lift some dust off my Cannes' conscious self, and I was quite surprise to find out that there is not much of a web-trace of those glamorous haydays on the French Riviera. Just some pictures and a handful of videos (some of which I link in this post). Regardless the scarsity of images, looking at the fading portraits of graceful figures flirting with the camera, the legions of photographers following them with their beautiful old paparazzi-style cameras (just like those in La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini) and the famous Bardot bikini stunt that granted moral appropiate status to bikinis throughout the world, was a bit of a spoiler for my trip to this year's Festival...in 2007 it just cannot work the same way! And I wonder: has Cinema lost its power to make the world dream?

Here it's how it used to be, and a glimpse of Juliette Binoche steeling airtime at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival where she was for her lead role in André Téchiné's Rendez-vous:



The 60th Cannes Film Festival runs from 16th to 27th of May.

related links: Cannes' video Archive - The Independent