THE NEW REPUBLIC

Stanley Kauffmann on Film

HENRY JAGLOM’S “FESTIVAL IN CANNES” HOLDS US FIRST BY THE SPARKLE OF ITS ACTORS. It is lovely to see Anouk Aimeé again; time has only made her more of a mortal. Greta Scacchi is quietly winning; Ron Silver is vital and sharp; Maximilian Schell is continentally engaging and very handsome in his silver beard; Zack Norman is a prototypical hustler. These people and others in Jaglom’s cast move through several days of the festival, encountering in their fictional selves other actors who are there simply as themselves.

JAGLOM HAS DONE SOMETHING INSIDIOUS: He gets us really wrapped up in the buzz and the backstabbing of the film world, the trumpery affection, the hyperbolic nonsense. He plunges right into the wheeling and the dealing and the rhetorical extravagances and – through belief in them – transforms them into comedy. He seems to be smirking at us once in a while, murmuring, ‘Don’t care about Movieland, eh? Above all the gossip and chicanery, are you?’ Then he chuckles as he watches us staring at his screen, slightly embarrassed communicants at the tinsel temple.

MYTH IS WHAT HOLDS US THERE, THE PARA-REALITY OF THE FILM WORLD, A FABRIC OF DREAM AND SEX AND VIVID IMPOSSIBILITY THAT, ALMOST INDEPENDENTLY OF FILMS THEMSELVES, HAS EMBRACED OUR WORLD FOR A CENTURY!”