Cannes 1968

Figure 1: Godard loses his glasses and Truffaut takes a spill during the chaos of the abortive screening of
Peppermint Frappé at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival. Peppermint Frappé director Carlos Saura and star Geraldine
Chaplin were among those trying to prevent the screening as part of the ongoing efforts to shut down the festival.
(Godard is clearly the Velma of the Nouvelle Vague.)
 Figure 2: Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut call for a halt to the 1968 Cannes Film Festival
due to the ongoing nationwide strike in France

Gilles Jacob: Why did you stop the Cannes Festival?

François Truffaut: Because it was the logical thing to do. France was closing down,
therefore Cannes had to close down. While I was driving to Cannes on May 17 to take
part in a press conference about the Cinémathèque affair, I was listening to the radio
and every half-hour came reports of more factories being occupied. I wasn’t sorry to
see France paralyzed, the government was in disarray. Next day, when I asked for the
Festival to be stopped, I wasn’t thinking particularly of a gesture of solidarity with the
workers—I’d have been more likely to feel solidarity with the four students who were
sentenced to jail after a hasty session in a Sunday court. I wasn’t really thinking of
challenging or reforming the Festival, of doing away with evening dress or making it
more cultural. No, I just felt that in its own interest the Festival should stop of its own
accord rather than be halted a few days later by the force of events. I didn’t see it as a
military coup, I simply wanted an unambiguous situation. In fact, this is how it
happened.
During the night I was told of the creation of the Etats Généraux du Cinéma and their
decision to stop the Festival, and I talked to a few people about it. We had no idea
how difficult it is to stop this kind of big business event. We just adopted the tactics
that had worked for the Cinémathèque: producers who had films in competition would
withdraw them, jury members would resign. We made a mistake in not giving more
information about the situation in France to people who for a week had been reading
nothing but the Festival daily. (You feel differently according to whether or not
you’ve been listening to the news.) This was especially true of foreign journalists and
delegates, who naturally had qualms about joining in an anti-government
movement…
Anyway, we had to get the Festival stopped and we did. In fact, we had a lot of
conflicts with Jean Luc regarding the possibility of keeping the festival running. Jean
Luc believed that we should occupy the venues. It could maybe have been managed
more elegantly, but in circumstances like this you’re inclined to check your manners
with your hat—and someone probably throws away the cloakroom key. I know that a
lot of people will hold our attitude at Cannes against us for a long time to come, but I
also know that a few days later, when there were no more planes and no more trains,
when the telephones weren’t working and we’d run out of petrol and cigarettes, the
Festival would have looked utterly ridiculous if it had tried to carry on.

Sight and Sound, Autumn 1968.