Still fighting on the beaches

A BOATLOAD of Hollywood stars, including Gary Cooper and Mae West, were on their way. Other visitors were arriving from all over Europe. The movies were ready to be shown. The first Cannes film festival - or Festival International du Film, as the French would have it - was under starter's orders.

The opening night was set as September 1, 1939. The date had been chosen by city officials, who'd won the right to host the event against competition from Biarritz, as a means of prolonging the summer season by a couple of weeks.

Their timing was bad. Hitler chose the same date to invade Poland and we all know where that led - the Second World War. The event was abandoned, leaving Cooper, West and the other screen VIPs to turn round and go back home.

The festival finally got under way seven years later and has earned a reputation as the most famous film festival in the world. Once again, the eyes of the movie industry will be on the small French seaside town as the 57th Festival de Cannes unspools from May 12.

It's ironic that an event conceived because of politics should be halted by politics in 1939. France was miffed after its hotly-tipped entry, Jean Renoir's anti-war classic La Grande Illusion, failed to win the top prize at the Venice film festival that year. Instead, the award went jointly to a German film backed by Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and an Italian picture made by Mussolini's son.

The fuming French walked out, followed by British and American jury members. Cannes was conceived to balance fascist countries winning all the awards. It was a trailer for the war that followed. Film-makers have been fighting on the beaches - well, the Croisette - ever since.

Cannes has always been at war with itself, torn between artistic merit and making money. Hollywood long ago decided that profit is the reason for producing movies, but Cannes officials clung to the ideal that artistic integrity, especially if it had sub-titles, was the key factor.

The conflict of interests explains why Cannes is as famous for topless starlets posing for photographers on the beach as who'll win the Palme d'Or top prize. The festival hasn't so much sold out, as allowed more commercial interests to exist alongside and often overshadow the art.

The official screenings compete with endless publicity stunts, lavish parties and antics of the paparazzi. In some ways, watching films comes low on the list of priorities. Making deals, announcing forthcoming attractions and getting your face plastered over the media are top of the visitors' things-to-do list.

Unlike winning an Oscar, a prize at Cannes does little, if anything, to boost box-office prospects. There was a time that American producers were shy of competing in case they won and their film was labelled "arty", something of a handicap selling a movie to a multiplex audience.

This is a particularly important year for the Cannes festival, following the 2003 event being generally criticised as boring and too dominated by old favourites. Low points included Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny, with a scene of explicit oral sex, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant, which won the top prize but failed to find an audience even in art houses.

It needs to re-establish its place as the festival of choice, above other European festivals in Venice and Berlin. Artistic director Thierry Fremaux has spoken of this year's competition line-up being "marked by confirmations and discoveries". Roughly translated, this means he's putting the accent on youth and new film-makers.

Cannes favourites like British director Mike Leigh have found themselves left out. His new film, Vera Drake, was a shock omission from the official competition. Auteurs have been replaced by crowd-pleasers and, with Quentin Tarantino cast as the president of the jury, the festival's "hip quotient" (as one US reporter dubbed it) has been upped.

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education will open the event, while a Cole Porter biopic, De-Lovely, starring Kevin Kline as the composer, closes the festival 12 days later. Neither film is in competition, merely part of the sideshow to showcase and market movies.

Also noticeable is a surge in American interest in Cannes. They have a love-hate relationship with the place, not always for artistic reasons - Sylvester Stallone cancelled his visit after invasion threats from Algeria in the 1980s.

This year, the Americans are back. The Coen brothers, Cannes favourites and past winners, return with their remake of the old Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. That means Tom Hanks will be among the Hollywood stars on the Croisette. Oscar-winners Charlize Theron and Sean Penn, along with Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Naomi Watts, Penelope Cruz and Kevin Kline, are likely to attend too.

In the old days a topless starlet could cause controversy. Actor Robert Mitchum was vilified in the US press after being photographed with a half-naked lady on the beach in 1954. "I just put my arms around her to preserve her modesty," he protested.

These days, it takes more than a pair of exposed breasts to stir things up. The most likely contender this time is documentary film-maker Michael Moore, whose Fahrenheit 9/11 offers a critical look at Bush's foreign policy in the wake of the World Trade Centre terrorist attack.

The directors of 12 of the 18 films in the official competition haven't previously contended for the Palme d'Or. There is a strong Asian presence. Comedy and animation, including Shrek 2, have a place this year too.

The idea of deciding between a computer-animated movie with a talking donkey and a Balkan comedy-drama by two-time Palme d'Or winner Emir Kusturica is plain silly. Tarantino and his panellists - who include actresses Kathleen Turner, Tilda Swinton and Emmanuelle Beart, as well as lesser-known writers, directors and even a critic - will have their work cut out to satisfy everyone with their decisions.

British hopes are low. We can only claim an interest in The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, a biopic about the British actor and Goon financed by HBO and BBC Films. Geoffrey Rush, an Oscar-winner for Shine, plays the troubled performer with Charlize Theron as one of his wives, Britt Ekland.

Just as the festival itself has a split personality, torn between art and money, so the people in the industry themselves have mixed feelings. They wouldn't miss the chance to go, but moan about what happens when they get there.

Perhaps the late Peter Ustinov summed up the experience best when he said: "It's useful because, in a few days, you can meet all the people you must carefully avoid for the rest of the year."