Nobody is counting on the scandal in Cannes anymore. It has been a long time since the most important film festival in the world has been the scene of major controversies. When one comes up against something – this was the case of the Danish director Lars Von Trier, who in 2011, while presenting
Melancholy
, declared that he understood Hitler in a droning tone: “He's not what we would call a good guy, but I sympathize with him a little” –, The issue is usually resolved with a few medium-sized headlines and a few fallow editions. Even professional provocateurs like Gaspar Noé no longer have much to do on the Croisette promenade.
As for the critical complaints about the winners of the Palme d'Or, few have been staged once the collective trauma of 25 years ago was overcome, when David Cronenberg refused to award the first prize to the favorite
All About My Mother
by Pedro Almodóvar to benefit
Rosetta
, by the Dardenne brothers. That is why it is so surprising to know that there was an edition of Cannes in which a thunderous tide of boos from the audience gathered in the festival palace, the two greatest living gods of French entertainment holding their nerve as best they could, and an irate director with his fist in his fist. high. This happened in 1987, and was possibly the last great moment of genuine general discomfort that Cannes has produced.
That year the 40th anniversary of the festival was celebrated. For this occasion, the usual legion of stars had gathered: Elizabeth Taylor, Robert De Niro, Claudia Cardinale, John Malkovich, John Travolta, Marcello Mastroianni, Diane Keaton, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and the silent film diva Lillian Gish, who at 93 years old returned to the big screen. But no one shone as brightly as Prince Charles and Diana of Wales, present there for a tribute to their compatriot, actor Alec Guinness.
At the gala session that they both attended, Diana wore a blue dress that alluded to Grace Kelly from
To Catch a Thief
, filmed on the Côte d'Azur, and her presence caused such a stir that the director – also British – Lindsay Anderson raised a protest to the festival representatives who wanted him to give way to the royal couple: “Let's not forget that this is a film festival, we are supposed to be here to talk about films.”
It may be objected that, paradoxically, movies are not what is talked about most at a film festival, while other topics – such as the progress of business, the world political situation or the haute couture brands worn by the stars – are more succulent. to dispatch But at the closing gala things were put back into place, although not in the expected way. The specialized press and fans assumed that the Palme d'Or was debated between the tender
Black Eyes
, by the Russian Nikita Mijalkov (on one side of the ring, Dad's old academicism), and
The Sky Over Berlin
, by the German Wim Wenders (on the other side, the irreducible cinephilia).
The Family
, by veteran Ettore Scola, and
The Architect's Belly
, revelation by Peter Greenaway, were other candidates with options. Then the actor and singer Yves Montand, president of the official jury, and a brilliant Catherine Deneuve, who carried the Palme d'Or with both hands, displayed in its case of small doors like a host in a tabernacle, came on stage. Montand read: “The Palme d'Or (goes) unanimously to…
Under the Sun of Satan
, by Maurice Pialat!”
That's when the stage fell apart. Applause and – much more audible – whistles and boos, even shouts, began to sound at the same time, as if she were welcoming Marie Antoinette on the path to the scaffold. Maurice Pialat, the recipient of the Palme and the audience's reactions, a man of medium height, white beard and sallow skin, dressed in a gray jacket in the territory of tuxedos and long dresses, emerged as best he could from his seat and advanced towards the stage to collect his palm. Meanwhile, Catherine Deneuve approached the microphone to try to calm her spirits: “I would like to ask you to listen to Maurice Pialat, because I have always been very struck by his intelligence and his love for cinema. Even though his film is very controversial, I ask you to let him speak.” And for a few seconds the public bowed before the authority of the star. Enough time for Pialat to deliver the following acceptance speech: “I will not fail my reputation. I am especially happy tonight for all the shouts and whistles you direct at me. And if you don't like me, I tell you that I don't like you either." In one hand he held his Palme d'Or. The other waved it high and clenched his fist, in defiance against an audience that was resuming louder whistles and boos at him.
The next day, the international culture and entertainment press expressed their surprise at the decision of a jury in which, in addition to Montand, the American writer Norman Mailer, the Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, the French critic Danièle Heyman and the British producer stood out. Jeremy Thomas. Ángel Fernández-Santos was especially offended in the pages of this newspaper, suggesting that the judges had “given in to pressure” to award a French director – the host country had not won first prize for 21 years, thanks. to the mellifluous
A Man and a Woman
(1966), by Claude Lelouch–, and claimed the award for Mijalkov's film. Later it would be known that another member of the jury, the also Russian Elem Klimov, had refused to award
Black Eyes
for both political and artistic reasons, threatening to resign if he was contradicted. For her part, Danièle Heyman would declare in 2019 that neither she nor her colleagues received any pressure from outside, and that from the first vote one of the best positioned candidates was Pialat's film. She did admit, however, that there the vote was not so much in favor of Pialat as against Mijalkov.
From the first screenings at the festival,
Under the Sun of Satan
was one of the least valued films by the press, in a year in which the competition in this regard was tough – Francesco Rosi's adaptation of
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
was renamed by the critic Gérard Lefort, who lived up to his last name, as “Chronicle of a Shit Announced” – and many articles had highlighted its disconcerting and fluid narration, its abrupt editing, its depressing atmosphere and its pretentious tone. It was even rumored that Gérard Depardieu, the protagonist, had tried to have the film withdrawn from the competition after learning of the critical reactions.
It was the eighth film by Pialat, one of the first post-Nouvelle vague directors, highly appreciated by some film buffs thanks to previous works such as
We Will Not Grow Old Together
(1972),
Loulou
(1980) or
To Our Loves
(1983), with which he had won the César award for best film. After these autobiographical stories, in
Under the Sun of Satan
he adapted a novel by the French Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, focused on the parallel stories of a young woman who murders her lover and ends up committing suicide and a rural priest who struggles against Satan, who is presents in flesh and blood, before obtaining divine grace to perform a spectacular miracle. The asceticism of his visual proposal did not connect with an audience that in that Cannes was much more willing to be carried away by the mixture of joie de vivre and nostalgic demagoguery of
Black Eyes
or the colorful tableaux vivants of
The Architect's Belly
. However, Pialat received public congratulations from the President of the French Republic, François Mitterrand, and the Minister of Culture, Jack Lang.
Washington Post
critic Hal Hinson
wrote: “Your choice: You can spend whatever dollars it takes to see Maurice Pialat's
Under Satan's Sun
, or you can stay home and hit yourself over the head with a hammer.” And then he elaborated: “The pain that
Under Satan's Sun
causes is less extreme, but it will eat at you long and with low intensity throughout one endless scene after another. Other symptoms include difficulty breathing, lower back pain, loss of sensation in the extremities, and a feeling of impending death.” In return, the members of
Cahiers du Cinéma
became champions of the film, which they considered the best of that 1987, leading a ranking that also included
The Last Emperor by Bertolucci, Intervista
by Fellini and
Blue Velvet
by David Lynch.
Satan's legacy
For the rest, although Pialat's film is perhaps the Cannes winner that has received the most response when the awards were read, it is not the only one that has been the subject of some controversy. Just three years later, David Lynch's
Wild at Heart
(now considered more than deserving of the award) was seen by many as a violent delirium far inferior to candidates like
Zhang Yimou's
Ju Dou
or Jean–Paul's
Cyrano de Bergerac
Rappeneau. In 1994, when Clint Eastwood, the president of the jury of that edition, announced that the Palme d'Or was for Quentin Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction
, the majority of the public gave him a standing ovation and loud applause, but the voice of a woman who shouted: “Mais quelle daube! Putain fait chier!” (something like “But that's crap, you have to screw it!”), to which Tarantino responded from the stage with a comb.
Throughout the history of the festival, other Palmas such as
La dolce vita
(Fellini, 1960),
Viridiana
(Buñuel, 1961),
Taxi driver
(Scorsese, 1976),
Barton Fink
(Coen ) have also generated critical division or political controversies.
, 1991) or
Uncle Bonmee
(Apichatpong, 2010). But all these films, without exception, have passed the filter of time much better than many of those that in their day won the award under a general climate of consensus, in the style of
Black Orpheus
(Camus, 1959),
A Man and a Woman
(Lelouch, 1966),
The Mission
(Joffé, 1986) or
Pelle the conqueror
(August, 1988).
As for the contest for the next edition, whose selection was revealed last Thursday and which will be held from May 14 to 25, a priori the greatest possibilities of scandal come from the
body horror
of
The Substance
, Coralie Fargeat's second feature film after her violent revenge story
Revenge
(2017), and the return to cinema of Francis Ford Coppola with
Megalopolis
, which is expected to radically divide opinions, as perhaps the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos, David Cronenberg, Paul Scharader and Paolo will also do Sorrentino.
Seen today, Pialat's film is of unusual beauty, and some of its scenes display a devastating plastic and dramatic force, which has rarely been equaled: the encounter between the priest Donissan (Gérard Depardiu) and the devil in the darkened field , the face to face between Mouchette (Sandrine Bonnaire) and her lover that ends with a cry of frustration, the decisive moment of the miracle. If such a well-worn concept as “masterpiece” is still valid today, it is to describe films like Under
Satan
's Sun.