‘Eternity’ Nabs Prize, Benigni Steals Show

Theo Angelopoulos’ “Eternity and a Day” may have won the Palme d’Or at the 51st Festival International du Film, but it was Roberto Benigni, Italy’s comic whirlwind, who captivated the closing night audience.

Probably the funniest man in Europe, Benigni went uproariously out of control when the film he co-wrote, directed and starred in, “Life Is Beautiful,” won the Grand Prize, the festival’s runner-up award Sunday night.

He burst out of his seat and hugged the evening’s hostess, French actress Isabelle Huppert, so hard she screamed. Catching sight of jury president Martin Scorsese, Benigni first went down on his knees and then bent further down and passionately kissed the director’s feet. Leaping up, Benigni then kissed every member of the jury, male and female, before coming to the podium and saying in fractured French, “What was it I won, the Palme d’Or?”

“Life Is Beautiful,” to be distributed by Miramax (“Harvey Weinstein that I love, what a man,” Benigni said from the stage), has been surprisingly popular in Italy and was just nominated for 12 David di Donatellos, the Italian Oscar.

An unlikely fable about an Italian Jew sent to a concentration camp with his family who tries to hide the reality of the situation from his young son, this funny, sentimental film succeeds better at its impossible task than one would have thought possible.

“This is not a comic movie about concentration camps, it’s a movie by a comic about the camps, a tragic movie made by a comedian,” Benigni said earlier in the week. He added, by way of a manic apology, “My English is really revolting. I can feel it.”

Also controversial, though for different reasons, was the award to Angelopoulos, the first Palme ever given to a Greek film. Three years ago, the director scandalized the festival when he got the runner-up Grand Prize for “Ulysses’ Gaze,” and complained from the podium that he deserved the top prize. Unrepentant, Angelopoulos said in his acceptance speech Sunday that “If I hadn’t won this prize I would have said the same thing I said last time.”

Known as a director who, in the words of one critic, “is running for God,” Angelopoulos makes the kind of somber, magisterial meditations on life and death that epitomize European art films. Because this film, the story of a poet trying to reconnect with his life before it’s too late, is warmer and more emotional than the director’s usual work, it paradoxically alienated some of his strongest supporters, making it in effect the Angelopoulos film for people who don’t like Angelopoulos.

Because no one film stood out in this year’s festival, either for critics or for the jury, the latter group ended up spreading the awards among nine of the 22 films in competition. Four of those nine went to English-language efforts.

The Best Director Prize went to Britain’s John Boorman for “The General,” a beautifully made black and white examination of a modern Irish prince of thieves. The screenplay award went to American Hal Hartley for “Henry Fool,” a typically deadpan story of the effect a pompous egomaniac has on a humble garbage man.

The Best Actor Prize went unanimously to Peter Mullan, the charismatic star of Ken Loach’s working-class tale, “My Name Is Joe,” who accepted wearing a kilt, which visibly surprised Scorsese. And Todd Haynes’ swirling “Velvet Goldmine” earned the director a special prize for Best Artistic Contribution.

(The other Todd at Cannes, Todd Solondz, unanimously won the International Critics Prize for out-of-competition films for his gleefully over-the-edge comedy “Happiness.” And director Marc Levin won the prestigious Camera d’Or for Best First Film for “Slam,” which took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance).

The competition prize for best actress was the least surprising of the night. It was shared by two young French actresses, Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Regnier, the stars of the greatly admired “The Dream Life of Angels,” directed by Erick Zonca. To be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics (which also has “Henry Fool”), “Angels” is an intimate, touching, finally unnerving look at two rootless young women trying to construct the best lives they can out of flimsy material.

In its final act of largess, the jury awarded a pair of special prizes. One went to the French “Class Trip,” Claude Miller’s tale of a troubled schoolboy. The other went to Thomas Vinterberg’s edgy and original Danish “Festen,” (‘Celebration’) the story of a chaotic tragi-comic 60th birthday party.

CANNES

* Reports From the Festival

* SIDESHOW

On fringes of film, some great circus and zany Palmes. F12