FILM FEST IN FRANCE HAS A U.S. GLOW

There is something puzzling about the American film festival the French celebrate every year in this Normandy beach resort. It’s a little like the city of Detroit staging an annual joyful homage to Japanese cars.

The most fierce competition for French movies in France comes from American movies. The latest statistics, in fact, shocked the French film industry by showing that for the first three months of this year, American films for the first time attracted more French moviegoers.

Many leading French artists, such as director Bernard Tavernier, stay away, and no government official gave the proceedings an official blessing until this year. Still, the Deauville festival continues, now in its 12th year and powered by an unabashed French adoration of Hollywood. Not only do many French, including intellectuals, love American movies, they love them almost blindly.

Reporters seem to come to Deauville news conferences less to question than to praise. Speaking slowly in careful English, Tony Curtis, one of those honored at the festival this year, told reporters, “This is the first time in my life that anyone has given me a retrospective. I hope that doesn’t mean that I’m dead.”

“No, you’re not,” a reporter called out in tones of adulation. Curtis, wearing a velvet jacket, a white, open-neck shirt and white trousers, smiled and basked in the warmth.

He was soon asked his opinion of the movies of Woody Allen. “I don’t like him,” said Curtis. “I find the humor of Woody Allen too negative.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh,” moaned another reporter in disappointment.

In the view of Andre Halimi, the 55-year-old journalist and television producer who founded the festival in 1974, the celebration of American movies is simply an acceptance of “historic reality.”

“American culture has many talents,” he said, taking a few minutes off to chat during a busy festival day. “In the future, many more things will be American, and it will become chic, a la mode, more and more to accept American culture.”

With critics describing the eight-day festival, which ends Sunday, as somewhat lackluster this year, attention has focused on the official blessing conferred by Minister of Culture Francois Leotard. No minister has ever attended before. In fact, Leotard’s predecessor, Jack Lang, a Socialist, looked on the festival contemptuously as no more than a showcase for the American film industry and an agent of American cultural imperialism.

The conservative Leotard, in an evident attempt to ridicule his predecessor, announced that he would show up.

“You cannot protect French cinema with useless and harassing measures like a boycott,” he told the French weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. “American movies are at home in France just like French movies are at home in the United States.”

The festival is not a competition but a kind of preview of American movies scheduled to open before year’s end in the first-run theaters on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris. In almost every case, the movies have already been released in the United States, sometimes long ago, and the French have heard something about them.

At this year’s festival, the films most awaited were probably James Cameron’s “Aliens,” Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple,” Paul Mazursky’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn,” Sydney Lumet’s “Power” and Tony Scott’s “Top Gun.”

A film failure in the United States sometimes strikes the fancy of French audiences. Jerry Lewis, for example, is looked on in France as a great comic genius.

Director Richard Brooks, who was honored at this year’s festival, said his 1965 adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” failed at American box offices but did well in France and the rest of Europe.

“The Europeans,” he said over breakfast, “could accept a hero like Lord Jim who is weak and dies at the end. In the United States, they couldn’t. They were waiting for Rambo.”

Brooks also recalled that the French had bolstered his reputation after he made “The Blackboard Jungle” in 1955. The movie had been selected for the Venice Film Festival, but the American ambassador to Italy then was Clare Booth Luce.

“Some senator told her it was a Commie film,” said Brooks. “She then informed the festival that if they did not withdraw it, she would not show up. So they withdrew the film.

“When the French heard about this, they made a big thing out of the film in Paris.”

The Deauville festival is a good occasion to catch the images of America that are going to bombard the French in the months ahead. A visiting American may worry a bit about that. Both “Power” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” for example, two of the most popular films in the festival, glorify American technological ingenuity even when used for cheating and lying.

Mazursky adapted “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” from an old French play and movie, but it is unlikely that this association was responsible for the American movie’s obvious success at the festival. French audiences are fascinated by Los Angeles these days, and the guilt, opulence, anxiety and immorality of the movie’s Beverly Hills family can easily persuade a French audience that it’s gaining some real insights into life in the United States.

By the standards of a festival like Cannes, the Deauville festival is rather small, with few side shows. There are no topless starlets to tempt photographers. Studios don’t throw lavish cocktail parties to drum up interest in their films.

“What’s this festival all about?” asked Brooks. “Why do they have it? There must be an economic reason.”

The answer seems to be that Halimi and some associates decided that France needed a new festival, got the city of Deauville to finance it and persuaded film companies and producers in the United States and distributors in France to show their wares.

Halimi insists that the festival gives the French a chance to influence the kind of American films that will come to France.

“In France,” he said, “we see only 30% of American production. Years ago, you could not see Woody Allen’s ‘Take the Money and Run’ in France. When I asked why we couldn’t see this movie in France, I was told that it was completely American New York Jewish humor and the French people would not be interested.”

Woody Allen is now a French favorite, and whether they understand his humor or not, the French are definitely interested.

“At the beginning,” said Halimi, “we had many problems--attacks from the left, attacks from the right.”

The most telling criticism came from those who said that American films didn’t need any boost in France.

Halimi recognizes that there is a cultural problem: “French culture does not want to die.” But he says the importance of American movies cannot be wished away.

“You can talk about cultural imperialism,” he said. “But you have to face reality. If we stopped 50% of the American imports into France, what would we do? What would the distributors do? What would the theaters do? What about the people who dub the films? In France, we need American movies.”

Further criticism has centered on the failure of the festival to show much of the work of American independents.

“We want to do that,” Halimi said. “But the independent producers don’t have enough money to come here. They often do not have enough money to subtitle their films.”

Halimi said the city of Deauville, to promote itself, funds the festival’s entire budget of 1.2 million francs ($180,000).