MOVIES : <i> Mon Dieu! </i> You Can’t Mean They Don’t Show Films on the Beach?

The crescent-shaped resort town of Cannes on the French Riviera looks like many other resort towns on the Riviera. White sandy beaches, calm blue-green water, oceanfront restaurants, a bluff-side promenade for strollers and, behind it all, a wall of hotels and terraced apartments facing the Cote d’Azur.

But for two weeks each May, during the Cannes Film Festival, the town resembles nothing so much as an ant colony. The beach, the restaurants, the promenade . . . they’re hardly visible beneath the crazy quilt of humanity. There are thousands of people moving in every direction, in and out of every doorway, some dawdling, some running, their polylingual voices blending in a surreal hum.

If you were plopped into the midst of this and began roaming around without a guide, you could, within minutes:

* See a thousand topless women turning golden brown or beet red on the beach (and get run over by paparazzi if one of the bathers turns out to be a starlet).

* See thousands of movie posters, some small enough to embrace a lamppost, others as big as a drive-in theater screen.

* Get caught in a crowd so dense, you can’t even turn around to see the person stealing your wallet (if you’re a man), grabbing your purse (if you’re a woman), or copping a feel (if you’re human).

* Be entertained by a man who imitates a cricket, or a mother-daughter team in leopard-patterned leotards, or a man strumming a zither, or a guy in a tux who climbs trees and sings arias.

* Choose between 15 movies being shown simultaneously, in about that many languages, then try to find the right theater (then try to get in, then try to find a seat!).

* Bump into a famous actor on the street, or be bumped into by a famous actor’s limousine.

* Be picked up by a transvestite you’d swear is Catherine Deneuve.

Or, get mad and go home.

The craziness of the world’s most famous and most important film festival continues Wednesday, appropriately opening with the industrial-strength version of Paul Verhoeven’s “Basic Instinct,” with the 48 steamiest seconds of the Michael Douglas-Sharon Stone sex scene restored. “More licking,” Verhoeven has reportedly promised.

The presence of American stars, combined with a sexy movie, is like dropping a match into the ant colony, making navigation that much more difficult. But for the rookie Cannes-goer, there is at long last help. Being published concomitant with the 45th International Festival du Film is “Hollywood on the Riviera,” a history, explanation and anecdotal guidebook for both the uninitiated and scarred veteran alike.

Co-written by journalists and Cannes fixtures Cari Beauchamp and Henri Behard, “Hollywood on the Riviera” contains everything you need or want to know about the town and the festival. From the kind of food you’ll find to the kind of people, it’s a “soup-to-nuts” account, if there ever was one.

Though Hollywood mavens look up their noses at Cannes as some sort of weird art competition, its importance to Hollywood and the rest of the world is indisputable. In “Hollywood on the Riviera,” Billy Crystal refers to Cannes as the film industry equivalent of an auto show, but it’s much more than that.

It certainly shows off its latest models of movies--as many as 1,500 films are screened somewhere in the ant colony over 14 days--but it is the one event each year that draws the movers and shakers from virtually every corner of the global film community, plus about 5,000 reporters and critics, uncounted thousands of movie fans and every world-class pickpocket west of the Himalayas.

A few years ago, Roger Ebert wrote a book called “Two Weeks in the Midday Sun,” a funny, personal and detailed account of the 1987 festival (illustrated by what appeared to be chicken scratchings, but which were, in fact, drawings from Ebert’s own hand). That was a strictly critic’s view of things, however; “Hollywood on the Riviera,” while not as stylishly written, covers the waterfront.

There’s festival history. The French launched it in 1939 to counter the fascist domination of the Venice Film Festival. After the opening night screening of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” before “The Wizard of Oz” could be loaded into the projector, Hitler invaded Poland and Cannes was canceled. (It started up again in 1946, and with the exception of 1968, when it was halted midway in support of national strikes, it has continued uninterrupted.)

There’s clarity. Beauchamp/Behard cut through the tangle of official and unofficial screening programs, telling you how to get from one to another, and even include up-to-date records of winners and honorees.

There’s insight. Every year, festival veterans sit around on opening day analyzing the political makeup of the jury and predicting, with amazing accuracy, which films will win awards. It’s not luck; jury members are often pressured into making political rather than artistic choices, and the authors recall--with the help of some outraged past jurors--the most devious examples.

There’s strategy. The major studios love to have movies shown at Cannes, where attention for their stars helps launch the films in the lucrative European markets, but they don’t like to compete. The chance of seeing a $40-million Hollywood epic get its butt kicked by some art film from Latvia is more than a mogul can bear. So, the studios strike deals with the festival organizers, offering to provide their stars in return for gala out-of-competition screenings. On that basis, TriStar’s “Basic Instinct” opens the festival Wednesday and Universal’s “Far and Away,” with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, closes it May 19.

There’s gossip. Everything from royal romance (Grace Kelly was introduced to Prince Rainier in Cannes, and Rita Hayworth found Aly Khan there) to sleazy quickies (there is tasteless detail about James Wood and an unnamed woman reporter in a hotel bathroom).

There’s perspective. Venerable film critic Andrew Sarris says Cannes-goers fall into two categories, “moles” and “moths.” Moles are those film nerds who burrow into the screening schedule, see dozens of movies, and rarely emerge. Moths are those who flock to lights emitted by stars and parties.

The subheading of “Hollywood on the Riviera” is “The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival” and sometimes, it is too inside, too industry-oriented. But for those planning to go for the first time, or those veterans who wonder why they can’t honor their annual vows to never return, the answers are all right here.