Yesterday, I attended the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ preview of the world re-premiere of John Ford’s Upstream (1927), which screens for the public tonight. “Re-premiere” because the film was long believed to have been lost before it was rediscovered last year in the New Zealand Film Archive; the film is part of 75 American silent films that are currently being brought to the U.S. under the guidance of the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF).

In addition to the NFPF and the New Zealand Film Archive, the re-premiere is possible with the cooperation of the Academy Film Archive, which found the film and supervised its preservation, which was paid for by Fox, who owns the rights. The NFPF’s Annette Melville tells me an effort on this scale probably couldn’t have happened in previous decades, when rights holders and archives were more possessive with their materials; global communications and current technologies are helping facilitate new discoveries, and recent attitudes embrace this cooperation as a win/win cultural scenario.

Upstream is a big win for John Ford enthusiasts. It’s one of only about a dozen films that survive today from Ford’s silent period, which numbered over 60 titles. It was made in 1926 at a time when Fox was under great expansion, in large part under the creative inspiration of F.W. Murnau, who had been invited to the studio and given carte blanche to make Sunrise. I’ve written about Murnau’s influence on Frank Borzage before in conjunction with Janet Bergstrom’s excellent documentary on Edition Filmmuseum’s DVD of The River, but Murnau’s influence was widespread.

Sunrise was produced at Fox from August of ‘26 to February of ‘27, when Ford saw a rough cut and went on record proclaiming it the greatest film yet produced, and suggesting that he didn’t think it would be surpassed for a decade. Ford travelled to Germany to shoot some footage for upcoming works and to study Murnau’s craft. As Joseph McBride describes it in Searching for John Ford:

“During his month in Berlin, Ford gave himself a crash course in German filmmaking techniques. He screened several of the major expressionist films and spent time with Murnau, who graciously showed him some of the extensive preproduction designs for his pictures and explained his shooting methods.”

Ford’s next two films–Four Sons and Hangman’s House (both of which are available in the Ford at Fox DVD box set) where highly indebted to Murnau’s mobile camera, moody sets, and expressive acting. As Tag Gallagher describes it in John Ford: The Man and His Films:

Ford was enchanted by the intense stylization of Murnau’s painterly invention, in which a character’s conscious rapport with his physical world seemed suddenly palpable. Ford’s movies had been relatively unstylized. But henceforth lighting creates dramatic mood through emphatically contrasting black and whites, macabre shadows, shimmering shafts of light, chiaroscuro, and other abstractions.

Upstream is being touted as a late-’26, Murnau-influenced production, but having seen the film, I’m hard pressed to make a very strong case for that. Firstly, it’s a light drama with a lot of humor, so it doesn’t afford a lot of opportunities for brooding cinematography. Its plot revolves around a love triangle in a boarding house full of eccentric vaudeville performers, and an opening title card describes their lives as “burlesque.” An ostentatious actor goes to Europe to play Hamlet and is an unexpected success, and a lot of the film stresses the difference between passion and loyalty and earning respect versus caprices of fame and shallow pride.

There are a few moments in the film that evoke Murnau’s expressionism: a long traveling shot down a dinner table featuring various characters is unusual for Ford, who typically preferred stasis; a nervous actor imagines the spirit of his mentor in a shot that recalls the climax of Nosferatu; flashbulb explosions from news reporters precede a character’s entrance and emphasize the emotional potency of the moment in the eyes of his abandoned lover; and the stage decor of the Hamlet production compares to the grandeur and artificiality of Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924), with the play’s resounding applause doubly-exposed for intensity. But by and large, the film feels like an effective but fairly classically styled studio drama, and citing examples such as these can seem a bit reaching.

This may have to do with the fact that Upstream was made prior to Ford’s Berlin tour, which by all accounts seems to have been the decisive event for his evolution as an artist. Another lost film that exists in part is Ford’s Mother Machree, which was shot in September ‘26 but not released until ‘28 after it had been retooled for sound. Gallagher describes the surviving footage, writing that “pre-Murnau Ford–pretty and picturesque, just like The Shamrock Handicap–contrasts with post-Murnau expressionism,” and cites examples of the latter, such as “angled shots of a tenement staircase” and another shot’s “theatrically expanded perspective.” There isn’t anything so overt in Upstream, so I suspect it was made even before Mother Machree (I haven’t yet been able to track down production dates).

If that’s the case, it’s not really fair to judge the film in relation to the work of Murnau. Upstream is an entertaining film with very charming performances, good timing, and breezy humor; one scene involving foot play under the dining table and mistaken identities is particularly funny, largely from the way the scene is cut and the way the actors play against type. Any rediscovered Ford is a welcome turn of events, and this film helps flesh out the talents and aesthetic inclinations of the filmmaker on the brink of his artistic evolution.

I was invited to attend this past weekend’s 25th edition of “The Reel Thing,” the annual technical symposium for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). The event offered an impressive line-up of some of the top film restorationists and preservationists working today, who presented their work and discussed problems and solutions they encountered. It provided a potent mix of film history, technology, and genuine concern for the past and future of the art form that was positively infectious.

One of the best aspects of the symposium was its cinematic egalitarianism, with attendees offering equally rapt attention to the finer details of classic studio films, foreign productions, independent films, television broadcasts, animation, live action, and more. The challenges of the craft were more unifying than any commercial or non-commercial definition; a 4K projection of The Sound of Music (1965) seemed as vital as a PowerPoint presentation of audio clips from Jean-Pierre Gorin’s essay film, Poto and Cabengo (1979).

Sony’s Grover Crisp, who organized the event with his colleague Michael Friend, presented the studio’s second 4K restoration, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and noted that previous restorations included “defects” caused by the production’s use of poorly-made opticals; a horizontal jitter in the original camera negative and subtle ghosting have now been corrected, and for the first time, the film’s original 2.55:1 aspect ratio has been resumed. (Crisp made everyone in the room cringe when he described how a previous editor had literally etched a scratch on each frame of the negative denoting what he or she felt was the “proper” 2.35:1 framing.)

Jack Theakston offered an encyclopedic, if at times bewildering, overview of the scores of stereo, widescreen, and 3-D formats developed between the 1910s and the 1950s. Among his assertions that took me by surprise: Edwin S. Porter worked with 3-D (and red/green anaglyph glasses) as early as 1915; theatrical screens until the 1940s only varied between 14 and 20 feet in width (with the latter reserved for the largest 3,500-seat auditoriums); intended aspect ratios often suffered during times of transition, such as in 1953, when films shot in Academy ratio, such as Shane, It Came from Outer Space, and 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, were released in widescreen.

Robert Heiber and Ralph Sargent talked about the challenges of digitally scanning optical soundtracks; they addressed variable-density formats such as Fox’s Movietone (used for films such as Murnau’s 1927 Sunrise) and explained why its AEO Light technology and “toe recordings” resulted in higher noise than Western Electric’s ERPI system and later variable-area formats.

Cinematographer John Bailey livened up the proceedings when he challenged the restoration of Bus Stop (1956), claiming it didn’t look like he remembered seeing it in the theater; like many digital restorations (and contemporary films in general), he felt the new print had poor gamma, showing too much mid-range detail and exaggerated contrast. Crisp conceded that this was a common critique of digital restorations, and acknowledged that it is impossible to make a film look exactly as it did in, say, 1956. Old prints were made on now obsolete film stocks using dye transfer processes that are simply no longer practiced. Modern restorations are more about getting things as close to original as possible.

Disney’s presenters proved to be the most polished–at times uncomfortably so for a technical symposium–as they showcased their first-ever digital restoration of Tron (1982), as well as their efforts to “fix” facial distortions in the close-ups of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). The latter is a work in progress; they plan to remove the visible wires of the famed squid sequence as well, once again blurring the line between restoration and makeover that haunts every digital decision.

One of the most impressive presentations was John Polito’s demonstration of the sound work he performed on Poto and Cabengo, Gorin’s first solo feature and an utterly fascinating exploration of the linguistic mystery posed by two young San Diego twins who appeared to have invented their own language. (The restoration has been touring, and plans are in place to release it as a Criterion DVD.) When standard de-essing software failed to correct sound distortions on the original master, Polito separated the sibilance and the vowels into separate tracks, processed them individually, and recombined them. Gorin (who was in attendance) emphasizes the dialogue by an ingenious use of intertitles and subtitles, inviting the viewer to listen closely and pick out the pidgin words, so optimal clarity was crucial.

Ken Weissman offered an overview of the Library of Congress’ state-of-the-art Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which opened in 2007 and houses the national collection of audiovisual material (consolidated from seven previous locations). The center aims to provide wide access to its holdings, and it was exciting to hear Weissman describe a plan for a “National Jukebox” that will make tens of thousands of pre-1925 Sony (Victor and Columbia) sound recordings available for online listening, complete with personal playlists, guest curators and scholars, and social media applications.

As someone who saw the 2010 reconstruction of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) projected earlier this year, I can attest to the phenomenal power of its nearly completed length (with only about five minutes still missing). Thomas Bakels, the technical director for the film’s reconstruction in 2001 and 2010, was on hand to talk about the process. By now, everyone knows about the 325 shots (about 25-minutes of footage) that came courtesy of a 16mm print found in Buenos Aires in 2008, but the print was cropped and severely damaged, displayed variable focus, intense scratches and exposed oil splotches. Using special software, Bakels and his crew managed to make the 16mm footage watchable. I was surprised to learn that a handful of 2010 shots have been sourced from an archive in New Zealand, and newly inserted shots featuring lettering or signage were hand-painted in German to replace text on the Spanish print.

The reconstruction of Metropolis has been highly venerated around the world, but Bakels was equally enthusiastic about his work on Munich 1945, a documentary shot in the ruins of his hometown shortly after WWII. Software corrected a severe jitter problem with the film, which has subsequently been released on DVD by Edition Filmmuseum.

UCLA’s Ross Lipman, the filmmaker who has restored key independent works by John Cassavetes, Charles Burnett, Shirley Clarke, and others, presented his latest project, the searingly cinema-verité Wanda (1970). The only film directed by actress Barbara Loden, who tragically died of cancer in 1980 at the age of 48, it follows the small town exploits of a divorced female drifter who gets involved with an abusive crook. Loden saw the film partly as a critique of the false glamor of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and the grungy settings, natural light, and non-professional actors lend the film (originally shot on 16mm) potent verisimilitude. Lipman–who places it in the vanguard of American neorealist films that includes The Exiles (1961) and Spring Night, Summer Night (1967)–chanced upon the original A/B rolls at a local lab just one day before they were scheduled for destruction.

Lipman restored the film with a largely photochemical process, judiciously reserving digital tools for specific problems according to two general criteria: 1) Does the problem interfere with the intended aesthetic? and 2) Does the problem tell us something about the film’s making? Thus, an occasional hair might remain in order to “keep the film alive.” Grain was considered an important part of the film’s overall aesthetic, so Lipman left it intact. He focused on an awkward break in tinny choir music that accompanies a church event, noting that the producers of the American DVD opted to “fix” the sound, whereas Lipman believes it was an intentional ellipsis meant to suggest a faulty diegetic source.

Wanda will have its world premiere on September 2nd–its 40th anniversary–at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Critics Prize in 1970. Apparently conceived as a tax write-off with no intention of commercial success (it was purportedly released in just one New York theater), the film’s strong reception in Europe made it, in the words of Lipman, “a failure at being a failure.” Here’s hoping the new restoration joins the other titles and processes featured at the symposium to preserve and promote the accomplishments of cinema.

Also, the new issue of Film Comment is coming out, and it names me as two of the Top Film Criticism Sites on the web for Film Journey and Masters of Cinema, the latter less a news source now than a specialty DVD label, but in its unfunded, pre-Web 2.0 days, it was something I was proud to edit.

Paul Brunick’s article prefacing the list, which is cross-published (with comments) at Slant–rightly takes to task Gerald Peary’s simplistic documentary, For the Love of Movies, and Thomas Doherty’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, two recent examples of critical histories that wax nostalgic about print criticism while suggesting that web criticism is nothing more than its undisciplined, amateurish cousin.

Regarding Brunick’s generous profile of Film Journey, I’d like to make a couple of minor corrections. The screening notes incident occurred at CSUN, not UCLA (though I was vague about it at the time), and just for the record, I’ve been blogging for eight years rather than six.

In the spirit of dialogue, I’d also like to suggest that while I am indeed a huge fan of Manny Farber’s writing, if I have a “critical idol,” it would probably be André Bazin (whom I cite in my About page). I also think any description of Film Journey would be remiss if it didn’t mention primary contributor Robert Koehler, whose globetrotting festival reports have long enriched the website.

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The lobby of Downtown Independent, where the first New Media film festival played Friday through Sunday, June 11-13. The festival is one of the first to be located purely at Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main St., located on the west side of Main between 2nd and 3rd and the only independently run cinema in downtown Los Angeles.

As ImaginAsian, the venue struggled, but reconfigured as a home to a broad range of independent cinema wedged somewhere between a more commercial house like the Nuart and a microcinema like Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre, Downtown Independent has become a favored Los Angeles exhibition choice for alternative distribution entities such as Northwest Film Forum, which brought Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool to Downtown Independent in early March. Just finishing a week run on June 10, Oliveira’s sublime 2009 miniature feature, Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl continued the century-old director’s incredible current streak, which continues with his new Cannes premiere, the sublime The Strange Case of Angelica.

DI will also serve as a key venue during the Los Angeles Film Festival starting this Friday. Essential viewing there during LAFF includes: Jaak Kilmi’s amusing and clever Cold War auto-doc, Disco & Atomic War (Fri June 18, 7:30p); the Larry Fessenden-produced Bitter Feast (Fri June 18, 9:45p, Sun June 20, 10p); Mads Brugger’s acclaimed “invasion” of North Korea, The Red Chapel (Sat June 19, 7:30p); Aaron Katz’ SXSW hit, Cold Weather (Sat June 19, 10p); and Amir Bar-Lev’s emotionally powerful look at the tragic murder/death of Arizona Cardinals star Pat Tillman, The Tillman Story (Sun June 20, 1:30p).

Beyond a spacious and pretty cool lobby, the DI has a terrific mid-sized auditorium, with a very good sound system (audibly on display during the Saturday projection of Double Take), ample stadium-style seating as well as standard rake seating near the good-sized screen. An upstairs balcony entrance leads to a back row that affords a great deal of privacy. Upcoming photos include the theater’s rooftop area, ideal for hanging before and after screenings, as well as views of various nooks and crannies in this distinctive downtown cinema space.

As promised, a view to the upstairs levels of Downtown Independent. These levels include an entry to the balcony, an office-meeting space, and access to the rooftop. Note that the predominant architectural style is Mid-Century Modern, the mode born and bred in Southern California and all too suitable for a Los Angeles cinema.

A kind of latticework view through the modernist railing from the stairs back to the Downtown Independent lobby….

Another view from the stairs of the DI, looking at both the lobby below and the meeting room above, ideal for (among other things) festival needs.

A view from the top of the stairs in the DI to the lobby area and the large Main Street lobby window. There’s a cafe atmosphere in the lobby when there’s a crowd, while street parking, especially on the weekends, isn’t too difficult. Besides, there are several lots nearby.

A view from the rooftop party area of the DI. Here, we’re looking north up Main toward 1st and 2nd, where you can catch dramatic vistas of old downtown (St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, the original home of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese) and new…

Another view from the DI rooftop, here looking west to a great gaze of downtown’s forest of skyscrapers, with some of the older (and now preserved) Spring Street buildings in the foreground….

By Robert Koehler

Following the New Media Film Festival screening last night at Downtown Independent in downtown Los Angeles, festival programming director Noel Lawrence (center) moderates a very new media panel discussion on Johan Grimonprez’s fascinating film on Hitchcock, doubling, paranoia, the Cold War and catastrophe culture, Double Take. In the foreground to the right is co-editor Tyler Hubby, who discussed the process of working for five solid months with Grimonprez during his residency at the Hammer Museum, where they culled UCLA Film Archive footage of everything from episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, rare promotional footage of The Birds (which becomes the key filmic reference point, shot during the October Missile Crisis), Folger’s Coffee commercials, and a forest of Cold War and early Space Race newsreel footage (among other things).

Grimonprez was also on the panel and is actually in this photo….on the laptop on the left side. Currently in Basel (presumably for the art fair, though I couldn’t confirm this), Grimonprez spoke on Skype audio and mic’ed through the laptop. This proved fascinating and valuable, since his thoughtful and voluminous answers to questions from the panel and the audience became perhaps more coherent and digestible by being on audio. The effect was doing a panel discussion via radio, and it concentrated the mind.

This was especially useful in the case of Double Take, which my Cinema Scope colleague (in the best and longest interview in English with Grimonprez in the summer 2009 issue available here) Mark Peranson refers to as “a post-Internet film.” I asked Grimonprez to expand on this notion; he noted that the complex ways in which the film adapts fiction (two Borges stories inspired by Dostoevsky’s The Double and adapted by novelist Tom McCarthy), edits fact and history in a kind of “drama,” and how the central theme of Hitchcock encountering his double who wants to kill him is given a hall-of-mirrors treatment that has the rapid, fractured sensibility of what one experiences on the web.

This webby viewing experience also has its doubling, since Grimonprez deliberately simulates the viewing effect of watching TV with a remote control; Hubby noted that those Folger’s ads were inserted every ten minutes in the film to create the illusion of watching TV. In the film, TV is viewed as a weapon of control, both seductive and as a tool of technological dominance: Hitchcock himself understood this, ironically commenting on the medium as host of his own show, while the film gauges the growth in nuclear weapons, space exploration milestones and steps forward for (Western) TV. Double Take may be some kind of masterpiece of cinematic history storytelling, media analysis and the “in-between” film–in between fiction and non-fiction, between cinema and television, between journalism and music. This is a key to its vitality and importance, and why it’s a film that must be seen.

LACMA is halfway through its series devoted to cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, one of RKO’s prime cameramen in the 1940s and ’50s, and thus one of the key strategists behind the shadowy “noir” look in films such as Cat People (1942), The Seventh Victim (1943), Out of the Past (1947), and Clash by Night (1952). But for me, the big discovery has been Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), a movie that has managed to completely escape my notice over the years despite the fact that it’s sometimes credited as being the first American film noir.

I write “American,” because as James Naremore argues in his excellent book, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, “film noir” was a 1930s French term applied to Popular Front movies such as Pépé le Moko (1936), Hôtel du Nord (1938), and Le jour se lève (1939) that was revived post-WWII when The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), and Murder, My Sweet (1944) opened in Paris. Borde and Chaumeton’s seminal book, A Panorama of American Film Noir (1955) dates American films noirs from 1941, which is pretty much what I’ve always accepted, but Stranger on the Third Floor–released a year earlier–is unquestionably a fully-formed American noir.

Contrary to journalistic convention, Naremore also argues there isn’t a very strong historic connection between German expressionism and film noir. But Pépé le Moko and Marcel Carné’s Popular Front films boasted German cinematographers Jules Kruger and Eugen Schüfftan, respectively; the latter was an UFA special effects guru who worked with Fritz Lang, and later as a cinematographer for Robert Siodmak and G.W. Pabst (though admittedly not on their most expressionist titles).

Stranger on the Third Floor was created by a Hungarian writer (Frank Partos), a Latvian director (Boris Ingster), and an Italian cinematographer (Musuraca), but it showcases a German heritage: Peter Lorre in fiendish makeup stars as a serial killer stalking the streets; shadowy, cramped rooms convey a clenching sense of Kammerspiel; and an expressionist dream sequence predates the graphic lighting in Citizen Kane the following year (both films share the same art director, Van Nest Polglase). A tribute page for the film offers an evocative selection of images.

There’s a psychological intensity to the movie that belies its awkward dramaturgy. (Nathanael West, who died in 1940, purportedly provided some ghost writing, but the screenplay is no literary achievement.) Though it begins with a witty play on mistaken identity–a man’s fiancee almost doesn’t recognize him after saving a seat for him–its story about a partial witness at a murder trial who suffers mounting self-doubt oscillates between earnest melodrama and absurd exaggeration. The trial features an absent-minded judge, a sleeping juror, and several comments about the inadequacy of the public defender: “I wouldn’t let him defend me if it was for stealing an apple,” groans one observer.

Steadily, the witness (John McGuire) questions not only the limits of his knowledge, but his own moral character; searching his memory for every offhand remark he ever made against a nagging and hypocritical neighbor, a series of flashbacks slide into a sweaty reverie as he imagines himself judged by his speech rather than his actions: “MURDER” proclaims newspapers in what must be 300-point type, and the sequence boasts a transfigured world with geometric shadows, echoing voices, and histrionic, leering faces.

Stranger on the Third Floor is a perfect example of a movie that likely would have been lost in the annals of film history if it wasn’t for the idea of “film noir” elevating and sustaining its reputation; hopefully the fact that it predates the official noir histories won’t diminish its appreciation, because its visual qualities are significant, showcasing Musuraca’s cinematography in its formative stages.

I’m sure most readers here have received their fair share of movie predictions from any number of websites, ranging from the accurate to the absurd. A few months ago, Amazon.com actually sent me this email: “As someone who has purchased or rated The Philadelphia Story, you might like to know that Furry Hamsters From Hell is now available.” This wasn’t a practical joke, it was a real attempt to persuade me to click on their website and spend $19.95. On the other hand it sometimes gets it right, like when it told me that based on my previous purchases, I might be interested in the upcoming Alamar (2009) from Film Movement.

“Recommend a Movie, Win a Million Bucks” (it’s a PDF) is written by Joseph Sill, an analytics consultant who spent “the better part of a year” competing with programmers around the world, hoping to discover the right statistical combination that would generate the most accurate predictions by July 26, 2009. The article is a fun–even suspenseful–and informative read, a crash course in machine learning rife with movie references.

“I think Panahi’s refusal to cooperate with [the authorities] prolonged the case,” Jamsheed Akrami says in Godfrey Cheshire’s summary of events. “They just realized they couldn’t intimidate Panahi. I consider that to be a great moral victory for Panahi and people like him. We have a lot of them in Iran. But they are not as well known as Panahi, and are sadly paying much heavier prices.”

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Apichatpong approximately 72 hours before he won the Palme d’Or. He had just arrived in Cannes from turmoil in Bangkok, as a group of us greeted him at the Princess Stephanie Hotel (also home to the premiere screenings of films in the Quinzaine). He presented his producers (and partners in the UK-based Illumination Films) with gifts of electric mosquito swatters, which are featured in an amusing nighttime scene in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. At this point during the festival, nobody had inflated expectations that Uncle Boonmee would win, though given the generally tepid reception which much of the Competition lineup had received up until this point, the chances of a win for the most daring film appeared better than ever….

Apichatpong arrives in Cannes (literally just off the airport shuttle), and greeted by Simon Field, former International Film Festival Rotterdam director and now producer extraordinaire of artists such as Joe in Illumination Films, his partnership with Keith Griffiths–whom I caught up with at the Cannes train station that morning after the Palme win, and who felt ad if he were floating on clouds (which may be a viable locale for Joe’s next film). Field and Griffiths, along with fellow Uncle Boonmee producers Michael Weber (of The Match Factory in Germany) and Luis Minarro (of Eddie Saeta in Spain) were relieved that Apichatpong had arrived. Until he did, amidst the turmoil and political violence afflicting Thailand, and various bureaucratic screw-ups, there had been real concern that Apichatpong wouldn’t make it to Cannes. It was the first of two very happy endings for one of the world’s greatest working filmmakers….

Apichatpong at his official Cannes press conference, describing the personal difficulties he experienced trying to get to Cannes from Thailand, and the relief he felt being at the festival….

Oliver Laxe, flat-out the discovery of this year’s Cannes, with his free-spirited and sublime You Are All Captains in the Quinzaine. Here, he’s enjoying his Fipresci prize for best film in the Quinzaine and Semaine at the awards ceremony at Plage du Palme…

Woo Ming Jin, very pleased in the Princess Stephanie Theatre after a successful premiere screening of his fine, neorealist film in the Quinzaine, The Tiget Factory.

And here’s Woo Ming Jin again, a bit more relaxed a day or so before the premiere….

Abbas Kiarostami (all together people, accent on the third syllable!) at his official Cannes TV interview for Certified Copy, which won best actress for Juliette Binoche. The Iranian director had made strong protests against the continued imprisonment of fellow director Jafar Panahi, who declared a hunger strike during the festival….

And no gallery would be complete with director Monte Hellman, whom I had chatted with on the first night of Cannes and then ran into in Heathrow Airport, en route back to The States. During Cannes, word slipped out that Hellman’s hotly anticipated Road to Nowhere will premiere in Venice…..

By Robert Koehler

You would have to go back to either 1999–when the Dardennes won for Rosetta–or 1997–when Abbas Kiarostami won for Taste of Cherry in a tie with Imamura Shohei for The Eel and when Tim Burton was a member of the jury–to find a Palme d’Or winner quite as satisfying and unconventional as tonight’s prize for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s endlessly inventive, mystical and funny Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Going in, there were plenty of concerns about a jury comprised of such wildly disparate personalities as Tim Burton, Victor Erice, Alberto Barbera, Benicio Del Toro and Kate Beckinsale. But when the dust cleared, this turned out to be one of the most intelligent and independent-minded juries in recent Cannes history. As had been widely expected, the prizes were spread around among several Competition titles, with three films scoring the top film prizes for Jury (Mahamet-Saleh Haroun’s richly deserving win for A Screaming Man), Grand (Xavier Beauvois’ majestic Of Gods and Men) and Palme (Apichatpong).

By the time the Beauvois was announced for the Grand Prize, the sense became overwhelming that Apichatpong would win the day, since most of the attending filmmakers had already won something. Kiarostami won via the official festival poster gal Juliette Binoche’s deserving best actress prize for Certified Copy (though I would have thought that Yun Junghee for his phenomenal lead performance in Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry would have warranted at least a tie). The tie instead went to the actors, with Javier Bardem’s sweaty portrayal of a dying man in Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s Biutiful and Elio Germano in Daniele Luchetti’s La nostra vita, widely perceived as the evening’s most curious prize.

Lee’s prize for screenplay is a sign of a jury that thought through its choices; the most impressive aspect of Poetry is Lee’s fascinating, densely layered and structured screenplay, comparable in every way to Secret Sunshine and a further indication that Lee’s years as a novelist inform his approach as a film storyteller.

Although he was heard to wisecrack with his bouncy cast of New Burlesque performers, “I didn’t know I was a director!,” Mathieu Almaric’s best director win for Tournée was a good way of giving something to one of French cinema’s hottest names. But Apichatpong’s Palme d’Or brings renewed meaning to the purpose of a prize which has increasingly been identified with establishment cinema, and in one dramatic stroke, a smart jury with nerve transforms it like one of Apichatpong’s jungle creatures into a whole new animal. Whatever anyone thought of the Competition going in, none of that matters now. A great film has gotten its due, and now, instead of gazing back, the Palme is looking forward.