The official Palme d'Or designed by Jeweller Chopard
© AFP Pascal Guyot

PARIS (AFP) - Billed at the time as the free world's cinematic answer to fascism, Cannes' lights went off September 3 when Hitler invaded Poland, pulling the curtain on peace as well as the filmfest.

With 1,000 movies to be screened at this year's 60th edition, and 15,000 film types and press on hand along with a slew of Hollywood and world celebs, the festival is a far cry from the modest good intentions of its founders.

The Riviera-based event originally was dreamt up as an ideological counter to Venice's Mostra filmfest, which in 1938 dished out its top prize to German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl's controversial film on the 1936 Berlin Olympics, "Olympia", slammed as a piece of Nazi propaganda. The Americans and English had said they would not return to Venice.

Film stars parade in the street of Cannes, southern France, in 1947
© AFP

"Since circumstances had discredited the Mostra," wrote French cultural official Philippe Erlanger, "why not create a model festival in France, a festival for the free world, if somehow miraculously peace could be saved."

The war ended, Cannes resumed in 1946 with 21 countries sending films, and 11 winning awards to keep as many as possible happy. Among them were David Lean's "Brief Encounter" and Roberto Rossellini's "Rome, Open City".

Movies at the time often were black-and-white, sub-titles rare and politics very much an issue as the Cold War loomed and independence movements crunched into gear across the world.

Up to 1972, countries selected their films screened at the fest, but Germany's first film was selected only in 1949, and Japan, Israel and Spain in 1951.

And in the 1950s several were hastily withdrawn to keep the diplomatic peace -- films about colonialism, Nazi concentration camps, and even Alain Resnais' 1959 "Hiroshima Mon Amour", so as not to upset the United States.

A person works on a poster for the Cannes Film Festival
© AFP Valery Hache

Domestic politics hit the festival itself during France's May 1968 student and worker protests, when Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut hung onto the curtains to stop a screening, and Terence Young, Monica Vitti and Roman Polanski walked out of the jury set up to select the festival's winner.

The festival had to be closed five days early that year.

Through the decades, international issues often played backdrop to the glam. Also in 1968, Czech-born film-maker Milos Forman, in Cannes to show "The Firemen's Ball", was unable to go home because of the sudden Soviet invasion in Prague. He left for Hollywood where he notably was to shoot "One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest".

In 1981, as Poland's Solidarity movement fought the Communist regime, Andrzej Wajda's "Man of Iron" won the Palme d'Or. "This was very important for us," he told AFP. "The Palme was our Palme, it was Solidarity's Palme."

But Cannes is as well known for its glam and its buzz, as it is for its role as a window on the world.

One of the globe's hottest party-places for rich celebs and Hollywood studios, Mike Todd set the tone in 1957 when he handed out casino chips to his guests to mark the launch of "Around The World In 80 Days".

Us actress Grace Kelly and Bristish director Alfred Hitchcock
© AFP/File

It was during the festival in 1955, the year the film buffs discovered James Dean, that Grace Kelly, on the Riviera after shooting Alfred Hitchkock's "To Catch A Thief", met Prince Rainier, whom she married a year later.

In the mid-1950s, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren drew the paparazzi like magnets, but the same year the festival's lust for starlets turned sour. After Robert Mitchum was caught by the cameras fondling British starlet Simone Silva's breasts, she was sent home in shame and committed suicide three years later.

Kim Novak in 1959 made picture history when a shoulder strap fell to reveal a breast, an incident repeated in 2005 by Sophie Marceau.

Men did it too, notably Arnold Schwarzenegger who in 1977 flexed his muscles on the beach to draw attention to his unnoticed documentary on body-building.

And on the film front, Cannes can rightly claim to have opened the path to glory to dozens of film-makers, including French "New Wave" icon Francois Truffaut who walked off with a prize aged only 28 for "The 400 Blows".

George Lucas, Ken Loach and Steven Soderbergh all showed their first features at Cannes -- respectively "THX1138", "Family Life" and "Sex, Lies and Videotape" (the latter won the Palme in 1989).

Quentin Tarantino's first feature "Reservoir Dogs" too was screened at Cannes and in 1993 New Zealand's Jane Campion became the first female director to win the prestigious top prize.

After looking askance at Hollywood's lowbrow big-budget blockbusters over the decades, the onetime arthouse festival in recent years has been the launch-pad for box-office hits such as "Da Vinci Code", "Matrix", and this year, "Ocean's 13".

Commenting on works that merited inclusion in the festival back in 1947, Erlanger said: "This brings to mind countries which produce massive numbers of films, many of which are out and out disappointments.

"In fact the big revelations come from countries whose films are not generally well-known in France, such as Italy, or not known at all, such as Mexico and India."

©AFP