‘First Festival of Cinema’ to Celebrate 50 Starry Years

A constellation of the world’s movie-makers and film stars, perhaps the most dazzling ever in one locale, will gather by the palm trees of the French Riviera next month to celebrate the 50th International Film Festival at Cannes, organizers announced Tuesday.

Besides singling out some of the best films of 1997, Cannes this year plans to lavishly celebrate itself, its unique role at the crossroads of art and commerce and its ambition to serve as a bridge between mainstream “popcorn movies” and small audience “niche pics.”

Cannes is “the first festival of cinema in the world,” Culture Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said at a news conference called to unveil the 1997 Cannes program. During the event, he said, “the entire world has it eyes focused on our country.”

At this year’s festival, which will be May 7 to 18, a gala evening on May 11 will celebrate the 50th staging of the now internationally celebrated event that began modestly, with only a few hundred spectators, the year after World War II came to a close.

Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has been chosen “by overwhelming majority” of his colleagues who hold Cannes’ most prestigious prize, the Golden Palm, to receive a super award, the Palm of Palms, created for the 50th festival, said Gilles Jacob, the festival’s general delegate and chief organizer.

Press reports from Sweden have said the 79-year-old director isn’t planning to attend to accept his prize, and Jacob said he doubts that Bergman will be there. But the prize will be given to anyone that Bergman designates, he said.

The 28 films selected for screening this year are heavy on American productions (six, more than from any other country) and on crime and violence, Jacob said.

“Eight of the films in selection are thrillers, excluding ‘Hamlet’ by Kenneth Branagh, which I supposed I could include,” Jacob said. “These days people want violence, blood, gore.”

American entries include Johnny Depp’s directorial debut, “The Brave”; Curtis Hanson’s thriller, “L.A. Confidential,” based on a James Ellroy novel; and Clint Eastwood’s “Absolute Power.” The Eastwood work, which will be the festival closer, already has been released in the United States and will not be competing for honors.

The festival opener will be the futuristic “The Fifth Element” by Luc Besson, director of “Le Grand Bleu,” “Subway” and “Nikita.” Jacob said it was still to be decided whether the French director’s latest movie would in the running for the Golden Palm and other awards.

The selection was made after viewing 860 films, Jacob said.

Other films in competition include “Keep Cool” from Zhang Yimou of China; “The Truce” from Francesco Rosi of Italy; “Welcome to Sarajevo” from Michael Winterbottom of Britain; “The Sweet Hereafter” from Atom Egoyan of Canada; and “Assassin(s)” from the young French film maker Matthieu Kassovitz.

Jacob said his list is not set in stone and that he will accept entries by Constantin Costa-Gavras and Abbas Kiarostami if they are ready in time.

This year’s 10-member jury will be presided over by French actress Isabelle Adjani, one of her country’s biggest box-office draws, who won the Cannes best actress prize in 1981 for back-to-back roles in “Quartet” and “Possession.” The panel includes three Americans--director Tim Burton, actress Mira Sovino and writer Paul Auster--and as many Frenchmen and women: Adjani, theater director Luc Bondy and star dancer Patrick Dupond.

Rounding out the jury are Chinese actress Gong Li; British director Mike Leigh, whose “Secrets & Lies” won the Golden Palm last year; Italian director Nanni Moretti, voted best director in 1994 for “Intimate Journal”; and Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje.

Neither Oliver Stone’s “U-Turn” nor James Mangold’s “Copland,” which some had expected to make the final cut at Cannes, did so. Jacob said it was because both were unfinished.

Asked by one reporter about industry reports that “U-Turn” had been judged too violent, Jacob said: “I did not see excerpts, but I have been told there is a certain degree of violence. . . . We cannot have an accumulation of violent film upon violent film in Cannes, because in the end, it becomes unbearable.”

Organizers said virtually all of the survivors among the 35 film makers who have won Golden Palms have committed themselves to attending this year’s festivities, including Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino and Jerry Schatzberg of the United States.

Also attending, organizers said, will be Jean-Yves Cousteau, Claude Lelouch and Costa-Gavras of France; Michelangelo Antonioni, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani of Italy; Andrzej Wajda of Poland; and Jane Campion of New Zealand.

The festival also expects to see the presidents of past juries, including Milos Forman, Ettore Scola, Bernardo Bertolucci and Roman Polanski.

Cannes organizers also promised major star power, with the expected appearances of Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Kim Basinger, Andie McDowell, Michael Jackson, Anjelica Huston, John Malkovich, Catherine Deneuve, Gabriel Byrne, Hugh Grant, Victoria Abril, Gina Lollabrigida, Claudia Cardinale, Sophie Marceau, Michel Serrault and Demi Moore.

In most years, Cannes and controversy go together like oil and vinegar, and this year’s festival is eagerly looking forward to the midnight screening of Abel Ferrara’s “Black Out” and a torrid on-screen fling between actress Beatrice Dalle and supermodel Claudia Schiffer.

Zhang Yuan, 33, a pioneering Chinese director whose movie “East Palace West Palace,” the account of a homosexual affair between a writer and a police officer, is to be viewed in one of the parallel events of the festival, has had his passport confiscated by Chinese authorities.

Jacob said that organizers still hope Zhang will be allowed to attend and that if Chinese officials don’t allow it, a chair will be left empty for the maverick Chinese filmmaker as a symbolic gesture. “The festival will do what’s necessary to defend liberty,” Jacob said.