Cannes 1939, le festival n'aura pas lieu

There is in this remarkable documentary a sequence that deserves a full film in its own right. On the evening of 22 August 1939 at Palm Beach, days before a first Cannes festival that would never happen, a party of American stars was in full swing. Yet at the same moment, thunder began to rumble.

Le Nouvel Obs

The film

The first Cannes Festival never happened, but it did exist. Originally scheduled from 1 to 20 September 1939, it was to run under the effective presidency of Jean Zay, Minister of National Education in the Popular Front government.

In 1937, Adolf Hitler was deeply angered by the results of the Venice Mostra, which had awarded no German film and had dared give one of the jury prizes to Jean Renoir's pacifist La Grande Illusion. From then on the dictator coordinated with his Italian counterpart to determine the prizes. It was in this climate of confrontation between fascist regimes and democracies that the idea of the Cannes Festival emerged.

Re-reading the image through sound

As sound editor on this film, my work was to bring silent archive footage back to life, and at times to offer it a historical reading. The fireworks opening the festival's first evening also carry the sound of bombs — the ones about to fall on the worst war Europe had known.