Cannes: The sad decline from greatness to mediocrity

By Yervand Kochar

During the 1963 Moscow International Film Festival, few had a doubt that Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” was not just a masterpiece but a milestone achievement that will signal a new epoch in filmmaking. The film was not merely contending for the Grand Prize; it was clear that no conventional prize can put a tag on the sheer artistic genius and refreshing power of the movie. Threatened by Fellini’s highly formalistic language, the Communist party’s movie department that was behind making the decisions of the festival, as usually, suspected something potentially harmful for the cause of the international proletariat. They began putting pressure on the head of the jury, Soviet filmmaker Grigori Chukhrai, not to award the Grand Prize to “8 ½ .”

Chukhrai was in a tight spot. He had his share of problems with the system with his 1959 war movie “The Ballad of a Soldier” where he did not depict the Nazis as stupid animals but rather as a highly organized and evil intelligence. Because of that, some in the government tried to ban Chukhrai and tried to label him as a Nazi sympathizer.

They failed; Chukhrai’s movies about the war were Soviet classics and Chukrai himself was a war hero who fought his way all the way to Berlin, involved virtually in every major battle of the war.

So when Chukhrai refused to back down the pack sensed an opportunity for a sweet revenge. Chukhrai claimed that depriving "8 ½" would not only be a blunt error of cinematic judgment but a political disaster for an A class festival...

It makes me queasy to see Hollywood drooling over Che. Osama is next, you watch. In ten years, college kids will be wearing Osama t-shirts as Hollywood makes a sympathetic movie about his early years. I bet they’re searching the Calvin Kline ads right now looking for some gaunt, hollow-eyed young man to play the part.

The film I mentioned? I didn’t mention it by name, but I was thinking of Motorcycle Diaries, at least one of whose contributing production companies is out of Santa Monica. I’m not sure what your point is, but my own point is that Hollywood churns out left-wing crap and many of them go to Cannes. I’m not sure why you have such a problem with that observation.

"Would you say the same thing about music? Literature?"

Yes. I have managed to survive quite comfortably with spending my time and money on fiction. Music is different IMO because it is something that can be done by anyone in the comfort in their own home. However, not doing so will not threaten their survival.

How did mankind survive before film-making came to light? How did mankind survive before tax-payer subsidized art?

The majority of ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ funding came from outside of American filmmaking. It’s even listed on IMDB with a Spanish title...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318462/companycredits

Very few Big Studio Hollywood films play in competition at Cannes these days actually.

Good rundown on all the interminable leftist directors that deem themselves "artists" of the first rank... and it is rank, a stench of the first disorder. These guys have never left high school and are now jockeying for Godhead status rather than Pothead status. But the stink has followed them and it is an evil one. You can smell evil... truly.

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