Great women and powerful AI jointly launch Cannes 2024

Advancing toward Côte d'Azur like in 1927's “Napoleon

The familiar three-second jingle signaled the arrival of my train run by SNCF, a French railway company. I quickly set the mood by switching my phone's music playlist to David Gilmour's 2015 song "Rattle That Lock," a beautiful track built around these harmonics. Following the quiet train, I set off from Nice and traveled west along the azure coast, reaching Cannes in just 25 minutes. This small seaside town had become crowded and staying there can be expensive during the world's most important film festival.

The sky was overcast, and it began to drizzle. Meanwhile, on the afternoon of May 14, local time, on a screen at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, a torrential downpour, which is unable to quench the flames of war, falls in 1793 Toulon, a famous military port on Côte d'Azur, not far from Cannes. This was the global premiere of the restored version of Abel Gance's legendary 1927 silent film "Napoleon." The monumental film, which runs for seven hours and took 16 years to restore, had only its first part, which lasted nearly four hours, shown at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Imaginative camera movements, superimpositions, intellectual montages, fast cutting, and three-way vertical screen splitting—these techniques, often seen in contemporary action films and avant-garde experimental video installations, were masterfully executed by Gance nearly a century ago with cumbersome film cameras. Few can truly have the patience to sit through this lengthy silent film at home unless their phones are put in airplane mode and out of sight. This underscores the point raised in my previous article: old movies are worth going to the cinema for.

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"Napoleon" (1927) by Abel Gance is the first film to be screened in Cannes 2024

Downgraded accreditation, increased registration volume, and heightened security

As a regular at major international film festivals, I've been absent from Cannes for a full decade. After ten years, the platforms that used to invite me for coverage no longer exist. Once you switch to a different media or industry platform, the type of accreditation you can obtain automatically gets downgraded. Although France is mocked for being a communist country, the Cannes Film Festival categorizes its accreditations into various tiers distinguished by different background colors in descending order of priority for online ticket reservations and queues: white, pink with dots, pink, blue, and yellow. Unfortunately, as a registrant for new platform , I could only get a yellow pass this time. This means that, in most cases, I won't be able to reserve e-tickets for key screenings online, and I'll be placed at the end of the queue. As a result, I have no choice but to navigate this strict hierarchy and endure the challenging upgrading process.

The festival's official website opens ticket reservations every morning at 7 a.m. for registered pass holders to book screenings which take place four days later. This forces film industry professionals and media personnel, who typically have late-night schedules, to wake up early to secure tickets. In recent years, the Cannes committee also introduced the "3 Days in Cannes" pass, primarily targeting students, which has significantly increased the competition for tickets. According to official reports, the 12-day Cannes Film Festival will host more than 35,000 participants from 160 countries. Consequently, not only are accreditations and tickets scarce, but accommodation is also a major issue. If you make a booking too late, it's no longer a matter of price; there are simply no rooms available. After all, this small resort town of over 70,000 residents sees an influx of film enthusiasts and industry professionals during the festival that can amount to half its population.

Upon arrival, my very first task was, of course, to queue up to register and collect my accreditation. Just as I got in line, a large number of gendarmes suddenly appeared and dispersed the crowd without explanation. Twenty minutes later, the queue reformed, and I successfully obtained my accreditation. However, when lining up to enter the screening hall, there was another stringent security check. Besides bag inspections, we had to empty our pockets of everything, including phones and wallets. Among all the film festivals I've attended, this is by far the most rigorous security screening.

The reason is understandable. With the Paris Olympics, an event much larger and more significant than the film festival, fast approaching and the renewed threat of terrorist attacks on the European continent, France, having endured numerous attacks, cannot afford to be complacent.

On May 14 , the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, France witnessed its bloodiest prison hostage incident in 30 years on a motorway toll in the Eure department, which resulted in at least two prison guards' deaths. Meanwhile, in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, mockingly referred to as the "training ground of terrorists," authorities discovered a badly decomposed, nearly skeletal corpse. In the notorious Seine-Saint-Denis department, depicted in several films portraying social violence like "Les Misérables," "Athena," and "Bâtiment 5," a four-year-old boy was brutally abused to death.

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Security is dramatically leveled up around Palais des Festivals et des Congrès

Great women lift the curtains on Cannes, ushering in the era of AI

Beyond the myriad social issues lurking in France, there's still the highly anticipated "sexiest Olympics ever" and the Cannes Film Festival's opening ceremony that exuded the spirit of French romanticism.

I remember that the opening ceremonies in the past were quite straightforward. After the jury members were introduced one by one, the host would simply declare the festival open and the opening film would be screened. However, this time, there was a significant addition of variety show elements. The host Camille Cottin took the stage in the symphony of a small orchestra and warmly welcomed nearly ten thousand spectators in the Lumière Auditorium and other screening halls in the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès into "a parallel universe called the Cannes Vortex." She continued passionately in euphonious French, "We watch films all day long and we discuss them all night long. Nobody speaks the same language, yet we all understand each other."

After the jury president Greta Gerwig made her grand entrance, Cottin switched to English and praised her, "Dear Greta, you are a gift for the festival, so the festival has a gift for you." Then, singer Zaho de Sagazan stood up from the audience and started singing "Modern Love," the theme song of "Frances Ha." She bounced her way onto the stage and approached Gerwig. Gerwig, who starred in "Frances Ha," had her directorial aspirations solidified by this film, eventually leading her to direct last year's acclaimed film "Barbie."

Following Gerwig, two other great women hit the stage. Meryl Streep received the Honorary Palme d'Or from Juliette Binoche. Watching a meticulously edited highlight reel of her performances created by the festival committee, the 74-year-old actress said earnestly, "For me, watching this clip is like looking out of the window of a high-speed train. Rushing like a flash from my youth to my fifties, right up to the present day. So many faces, so many places that I remember so well. When I was in Cannes 35 years ago, for the first time, I was already a mother of three. I was approaching 40 and I thought my career was over. [...] The only reason I’m here tonight is because of the wonderful artists I’ve worked with, including Madame President."

The opening ceremony featured a clip from "Frances Ha," showcasing a scene where Gerwig and Streep's daughter, Grace Gummer, are playfully fighting in a park. Streep humorously remarked to Gerwig, "I'll have a word with you about this later."

Following this, Streep, together with Binoche, announced the opening of the 77th Cannes Film Festival, in reasonably proficient French.

On the day of the groundbreaking release of GPT-4o, the Cannes opening film, "The Second Act," was disguised as a movie made by AI. Before the main feature began, it humorously presented a spoof of Netflix as the producer. In the film, after finishing their scenes, various French stars—who mockingly acknowledge their poor acting skills—report their work to an AI producer through an iPad and reluctantly accept their reduced pay. In an attempt to showcase human prowess, the film concludes with a seven- to eight-minute-long shot, leisurely displaying the camera dolly tracks laid out on the outdoor set.

Indeed, nearly a century ago, "Napoleon" was shot on a much grander scale, right here on the azure coast where Cannes is situated.

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Meryl Streep (center in white), Juliette Binoche (fifth from left), Camille Cottin (fourth from left) and the Feature Film Jury at the Cannes Film Festival opening ceremony

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