Vintage Cannes

In a year that had Volver, Babel, Pan's Labyrinth, Marie Antoinette, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, The Family Friend (and many more), a superhero movie found its way into the non-competitive selection: X Men 3: The Last Stand. Directed by Brett Ratner while Almodóvar, del Toro, and Coppola walked the red carpet, Marvel filled the super-Hollywood material with its entry for the Summer box office wars, and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Halle Berry (Storm) waltzed for the press contingent outside the Palais.

It's May 6th,1955, and Grace Kelly, wearing a fur stole and carrying a bouquet of roses, stops to smile for the camera. She's in Cannes to promote To Catch a Thief, Alfred Hitchcock's latest opus, co-starring Cary Grant and filmed in part on the French Riviera.

What a year this was! A rich crop with some of the best filmmakers came to the Croisette: Antonioni (L'avventura), Fellini (La Dolce Vita), Carlos Saura (Los golfos), Minelli (Home From the Hill), Jules Dassin (Never on Sunday), Buñuel (The Young One), Bergman (The Virgin Spring), Roberto Farias (A cidade ameaçada) - and Peter Brook, with Seven Days.

Up until May 2000, Björk was a well-known Icelandish rockstar, first with the band Sugarcubes in the mid-80s, and, as of 1993, as a solo performer. Cannes changed everything: the unpredictable choices of Croisette enfant terrible Lars von Trier had put Björk front and center in his musical drama Dancer in the Dark, and the result - including the customary quarrel between critics and festivaliers - was a Palme d'Or for von Trier for Best Film, and a Best Actress award for Björk.

Cary Grant brought a taste of Hollywood to the 1964 Cannes with Father Goose, in which he starred with Leslie Caron. In 2004 Cannes celebrated Grant in what would have been his 100th birthday (he had died in1986) with a premiere screening of the documentary Cary Grant: A Class Apart, with his widow Babara Grant in attendance.

In 1983, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver made the pilgrimage to the Croisette to support Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously. The drama, set in mid-60s Indonesia, a country in a political crisis that would soon overthrow president Sukarno.

The 21st Cannes Film festival began like any other, on May 10th, 1968. The opening film was a freshly restored version of Gone with the Wind,  hosted by  Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco.

Festival guest Truman Capote, still riding high on the success of In Cold Blood, enjoys the luxurious comfort of the Carlton Hotel in the company of his friend, Geraldine Chaplin, who plays the part of a dedicated hotel maid. Chaplin is in Cannes with director Carlos Saura's Peppermint Frappé - a movie that will soon be part of the festival history, not for being shown, but for not being shown.

Before the whole festival imploded under the pressure of a growing number of filmmakers and artists, several films were screened to mixed reactions. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby received mostly glowing reviews, around the theme of 'he's back to the vein of Repulsion'.

Born in Sweden, catapulted to stardom by Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman is such an integral part of Cannes that the festival made her the face of the event in 2015, the centenary of her birth.   She visited the festival many times and was president of the competition jury in 1973.