Apart from the competition, the most exciting section of the festival, for me at least, is the ‘Cannes Classics’ section. A real cornucopia, filled with restored classics of film history. Documentaries and portraits are also included. Thierry Frémaux, the artistic director of the festival, introduces each film personally, followed by an introduction to its history and restoration. No wonder that every screening has a special aura.
Such as the presentation of “Amores perros”, which celebrated its premiere 25 years ago in the “Semaine de la Critique” sidebar, where it was awarded Best Film and later nominated for an Oscar. Alejandro González Iñárritu, 36 at the time, was an unknown Mexican director. 'Presenting the film in Cannes opened an incredible number of doors for Mexican cinema,' he explained in Cannes.Visibly moved, his leading actor Gael García Bernal, who was just 21 years old at the time, added: ‘I would like to thank Alejandro for changing my life.’ It wasn't just García Bernal who became an international star because of “Amores perros”. It also opened the doors to Hollywood for screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. They were later joined by Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, the three “Mexican Musketeers” have since won more than half a dozen Oscars.
In a unique way, “Amores perros” sheds light on contrasting social scenes in Mexico City that literally collide in a traffic accident, from dog fights in backyards to the glamorous life of a star model. For González Iñárritu, the film is an ‘exploration of the nature of man without an answer’, as he remarked in Cannes.
Something similar could be said about ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’, which was presented in a restored version 50 years after its premiere. Kirk Douglas had already acquired the rights to Ken Kesey's novel of the same name in 1962, but it took 12 years for the film to be made. Producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz searched in vain for a studio willing to finance the project. ‘Who wants to see a film about a guy in a mental institution?’ was the typical reaction, as Paul Zaentz, the producer's nephew, recalled at the presentation in Cannes.
Milos Forman had left Czechoslovakia before the Soviet invasion and was only living in the USA for a few years. Before Michael Douglas contacted him, he had spent months depressed in New York's Chelsea Hotel without getting out of bed. ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’ won five Oscars, including for best film, best director, Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher as best leading actors, and is now a cinema legend.
Iconic is also John Woo's action film “Hard Boiled”, which he made before moving to Hollywood in 1992. The stars of Hong Kong cinema, Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung, play adversaries in a crime thriller who end up becoming partners. Director John Woo imagined a Hong Kong-style police film à la ‘Dirty Harry’. Chow Yun-Fat plays police inspector ‘Tequila’ Yuen, who puts down a dozen gangsters in a shootout in a teahouse right at the beginning. John Woo spent a week choreographing this sequence in order to perfect the acrobatic, anarchic quality of the gunfight.
John Woo "has taken the action genre to a whole new level. His shootouts are a ballet, his explosions poetry", as one American critic so aptly described it. Tony Leung, also known from films by Wong Kar-Wai such as ‘In the Mood For Love’, plays an undercover agent who infiltrates a criminal gang and ends up switching sides. In the superbly choreographed final sequence, which takes place in a hospital, he sacrifices himself for his partner while Chow Yun-Fat risks his life by rescuing the babies from the maternity ward.
The ‘Cannes Classics’ series, which similarly also exists in Venice, combines the festival's current programme with historical film classics that shine in new splendour on the big screen. Cinema may be a fleeting art form, but without knowledge of its history it is impossible to understand the present. With the passing of the years, you can see how well or badly films have aged and which have remained in the collective memory.