In a mildly tongue-in-cheek 1955 essay titled â??The Festival as a Religious Orderâ? the French critic André Bazin likened the Cannes International Film Festival â?? only a decade old at the time â?? to a monastic institution, devoted to the cult of cinema, or as he put it, the â??holy worship of a common transcendent reality.â? The festivalâ??s 65th edition gets under way Wednesday, and in many ways Bazinâ??s analogy still holds.
The festival universe is a great deal larger today, but Cannes remains the center of it, as bound as ever to ritual and tradition. When a French blog posted a fake list of competition titles as an April Foolsâ?? prank, the festival reacted as if to the commission of a cardinal sin. â??There is a code for conduct for Cannes and it must be respected,â? the festivalâ??s director Thierry Frémaux told the film Web site Deadline. â??Those who donâ??t respect the code will never come back to Cannes.â?
Cannesâ??s sense of itself as an institution never really fades, but these are especially giddy times. When Mr. Frémaux, announcing the 2012 lineup at a news conference in April, declared last yearâ??s festival a â??triumph,â? he was merely echoing the assessments of many in the film press and industry.
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