On the Cannes film festival

F t t c t s aFor a fortnight Cannes is the film world in little, and the Carlton Hotel is its capital city. We who inhabit the microcosm devoutly sever all other allegiances as we dash blinking from one black auditorium to the next. We forget that Britain – and even the British film industry – could hardly care less who wins the awards …

Au Hasard Balthazar , shown hors de Festival, will haunt my memory as much as any official entry. Listen to its author-director, Robert Bresson, [the] reigning philosopher of French cinema: “The use of professional actors is always false, though it may attract money. For the most part, film is photographed theatre, and that is where it fails.”

In Bresson’s latest film, the actors are amateurs. The protagonist is a donkey christened Balthazar; he is patience, endurance and charity, all of which are beatifically reflected in his unwinking, uncomplaining eyes. Here, if quadrupeds qualified, is the best performance of the Festival.

Finally, a source of astonishment. I attended a private showing of My Sister, My Love directed by Vilgot Sjöman, on the off-chance that it might be pornographic. I was wrong: this genuinely shocking Swedish film is the most exciting work of art to be presented in Cannes, 1966.

In synopsis, the plot sounds like a parody of everything one has ever heard about the Swedish cinema: nearby lives a witch who slept with her father, while next door there is a nobleman who regularly shacks up with his daughter. But the central relationship is gently sensuous and profoundly fruitful.

A public debate between writers and directors was held last week to discuss whether plot was essential to motion pictures. Godard was the main heretic, and Clouzot, Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky were among those who cross-examined him. This confrontation produced the best remark of the festival.

Clouzot: “But surely you agree, M Godard, that films should have a beginning, a middle part and an end?”

Godard: “Yes, but not necessarily in that order.”