Cannes Classics: Orson Welles Doc, ‘Bicycle Thieves’, ‘Big Blue’, ‘Grease’ – Full List
Orson Welles will be featured at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. It still won’t be via his previously unfinished The Other Side Of The Wind, which recently got caught in the scrum between the festival and Netflix. Rather, Welles will be represented in The Eyes Of Orson Welles, a new documentary from Mark Cousins that’s part of the Cannes Classics selection.
The festival today unveiled its full roster for the Classics sidebar which includes tributes and documentaries about film and filmmakers, and restorations presented by producers, distributors, foundations, cinemathèques and rights holders. Among the attendees this year are Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda, Christopher Nolan and John Travolta.
The Eyes Of Orson Welles is a journey through the filmmaker’s visual process. Thanks to Welles’ daughter Beatrice, Cousins (The Story Of Film) was granted access to never-before-seen drawings, paintings and early works that form a sketchbook from his life.
Beatrice Welles was also among those who tried to convince Netflix to reconsider a decision not to send The Other Side Of The Wind to Cannes where it had been offered a Classics slot. Netflix financed the post-production on the long-gestating project, and had planned to premiere the movie on the Riviera ahead of its fall release on the streaming platform. But Netflix ultimately decided to withdraw from Cannes after the festival stood by its decision not to allow films in competition which are not open to French theatrical release.
Elsewhere in Cannes Classics is a tribute to Alice Guy, the first female director/producer and head of a film studio with Pamela B Green’s new documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story Of Alice Guy-Blaché. Fresh from Sundance, Susan Lacy’s HBO Documentary Jane Fonda In Five Acts will be presented with Fonda in attendance.
As previously announced, Christopher Nolan will be on hand to present a new 70mm print of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for its 50th anniversary. Presented by Warner Bros, it was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. This is a true photochemical film recreation. The film will be screened in the Debussy theater with a 15-minute intermission to reproduce the real-life experience of moviegoers when the film was released in the spring of 1968.
Also on deck is a series of films about and by Ingmar Bergman. In Searching For Ingmar Bergman, Margarethe von Trotta traces the filmmaker’s footsteps as well as her own past and questions the new generation about the place left by the Swedish master. In Bergman — A Year In A Life, Jane Magnusson describes the existence of Bergman in 1957 when Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal were released. The latter will be presented by the Swedish Film Institute in a digital 4K restoration from the original negative.
Other titles in the mix for Cannes Classics include restorations of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, Luc Besson’s The Big Blue in honor of its 30th anniversary and musical Grease — the latter two screening on the beach.
Here’s the full list:
Beating Heart, dir: Henri Decoin (1939 France)
Bicycle Thieves, dir: Vittorio De Sica (1948 Italy)
Enamorada, dir: Emilio Fernández (1946 Mexico – Martin Scorsese to introduce)
Tokyo Story, dir: Yasujiro Ozu (1953 Japan)
Vertigo, dir: Alfred Hitchcock (1958 U.S.)
The Apartment, dir: Billy Wilder (1960 U.S.)
Diamonds Of The Night, dir: Jan Němec (1964 Czech Republic)
War And Peace. Film I. Andrei Bolkonsky, dir: Sergey Bondarchuk (1965 Russia)
The Nun, dir: Jacques Rivette (1965 France)
Four White Shirts, dir: Rolands Kalnins (1967 Latvia)
The Hour Of The Furnaces, dir: Fernando Solanas (1968 Argentina)
Specialists, dir: Sergio Corbucci (1969 France, Italy, Germany)
João And The Knife, dir: George Sluizer (1971 Netherlands)
Blow For Blow, dir: Marin Karmitz (1972 France)
One Sings The Other Doesn’t, dir: Agnès Varda (1977 France)
Grease, dir: Randal Kleiser (1978 U.S. with John Travolta in attendance)
Fad, Jal, dir: Safi Faye (1979 Senegal, France)
Five And The Skin, dir: Pierre Rissient (1981 France, Philippines)
The Island Of Love, dir: Paulo Rocha (1982 Portugal, Japan)
Bagdad Café, dir: Percy Adlon (1987 Germany)
The Big Blue, dir: Luc Besson (1988 France, U.S., Italy)
Driving Miss Daisy, dir: Bruce Beresford (1989 U.S.)
Cyrano De Bergerac, dir: Jean-Paul Rappeneau (1990 France)
Hyenas, dir: Djibril Diop Mambety (1992 Senegal, France, Switzerland)
Lamb, dir: Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1963 Senegal)
Destiny, dir: Youssef Chahine (1997 Egypt, France)
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