'The festival of Cannes places its 60th edition under the sign of modernity and renewal," declares the official program of the event. There might be a better way of translating that mission statement, but you can't miss the tone of royal superiority. The queen of film festivals acknowledges her slightly advancing age, and grabs the mace with new resolve.
This year's diamond-anniversary milestone is also a reminder that Cannes has a past and, something most film festivals can't claim, a sense of destiny.
As the mayor of Cannes wrote in his introduction to this year's catalogue, Cannes was "chosen to revive the freedom of expression that the dark years of the war had taken away."
Though Cannes often claims to be a media event exceeded only by the Olympics and the World Cup, in reality other events may draw bigger crowds (the Toronto International Film Festival, for example) or be even more commercially significant.
Even the lowly Golden Globes attracts as many stars, but no other film event has such audacious self-importance in its judicious blend of celebrity flash and quality filmmaking.
Tonight's opening film, My Blueberry Nights, brings both worlds together, with acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai ( In the Mood for Love) offering his first English-language feature, a road movie starring singer Norah Jones, along with Natalie Portman and Jude Law.
Looking down the list, there are lots of names of films in the official selection, and there's plenty for the cinema lover to relish: Wong, Aleksandr Sokurov, Emir Kusturica, Gus Van Sant, Bela Tarr, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Catherine Breillat, Quentin Tarantino and Joel and Ethan Coen. Quebec director Denys Arcand's Days of Darkness will bring the festival to a close.
For celebrity watchers, there are enough beautiful people walking around the Croisette to keep a tabloid photographer employed for the next year: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Al Pacino come into town to launch Ocean's Thirteen, in the last few days of the festival. Leonardo DiCaprio will bring his new environmental documentary, The 11th Hour; Angelina Jolie will launch Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, about Daniel Pearl's widow. U2 singer Bono is expected to show up for the screening of a new concert film. Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock will show clips from the upcoming DreamWorks comedy Bee Movie. Law, Portman and Jones will be on hand to talk about My Blueberry Nights.
Instead of a blowout, Cannes has chosen to celebrate with a modesty becoming to its mature age. At the centre is the May 20 screening of 35 three-minute films about going to the cinema, entitled To Each His Own Cinema. The directors comprise a who's who of international filmmakers - Ken Loach, Lars von Trier, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, Tsai Ming Liang and Canada's David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan.
At the end of it all, the jury will pick some films to reward. Some of those films may go on to further fame, though historically just as many may not even receive a major release. To the perennial frustration of the Hollywood studios and often to its well-trained critics, Cannes remains wonderfully unpredictable.
This year's jury, led by Stephen Frears ( The Queen), and including Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk and Canadian actress-director Sarah Polley, will look at 22 movies from around the world and pick their favourite.
The jury's criteria may be artistic, or sentimental or political, but they won't have anything to do with the movie's opening weekend's box office. At the beginning of another summer blockbuster season, that seems like a rare kind of freedom of expression.
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60 YEARS: A CANNES TIMELINE
The first Cannes film festival was planned for 1939, but was postponed because of the Second World War. RDA/Getty Images 1939
The first Cannes Film Festival is planned for September as an alternative to the Venice Film Festival, which has fallen under fascist control. Louis Lumière, the inventor of cinema, agrees to preside and a "steamship of stars" arrives from the U.S., carrying Gary Cooper, Charles Boyer, Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Power and Mae West. A facsimile of Notre Dame is built on the beach in honour of the opening-night movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.But the invasion of Poland causes the event to be cancelled.
1946
The first complete festival is mounted, with Roberto Rossellini's Open City winning the top prize.
1949
Ali Khan marries Rita Hayworth in Cannes, as the film festival becomes one of the social events for the nascent jet set.
1951
The festival switches from September to May, where it remains.
1953
Brigitte Bardot appears on the Croisette in a bikini.
1954
Starlet Simone Silva drops her halter top for the benefit of Robert Mitchum and attending photographers. Interest in the festival skyrockets. Three years later, Silva commits suicide.
1955
Grace Kelly, invited to Cannes to help clean up the festival's image, meets Prince Ranier of Monaco at a photo-op and they fall in love. Marty wins the Palme d'Or and later the best-picture Oscar. It is the only film to have won both.
1958
Film critic François Truffaut is banned from the festival for his vitriolic attacks on an event he considers bloated, commercial and stultified.
1959
Filmmaker François Truffaut wins the directing prize for his debut The 400 Blows, kicking off the French New Wave.
1960
Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita wins the top prize . This is also the year the festival introduces its film market, a commercial contrast to the world of high cinema, where porn and action films have literally been sold by the metre.
1970
Robert Altman's anti-Vietnam black comedy M*A*S*H wins the Palme d'Or, the first American film to win in 13 years.
1971
Charlie Chaplin is presented with the Legion of Honour.
1975
Michel Brault wins a best-director award for Orders, dealing with the War Measures Act.
1979
Against the wishes of United Artists, Francis Ford Coppola brings Apocalypse Now as a work in progress to the festival and wins critical praise.
1982
E.T. premieres on the last day of Cannes, and the audience gives it the longest standing ovation anyone can remember.
1986
Denys Arcand's Decline of the American Empire wins the International Critics prize.
1988
Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape signals the ascendancy of American independent film.
1991
Lars von Trier's Europa wins only a technical award from the jury, led by Roman Polanski. Von Trier says he "wants to thank the midget and the rest of the jury."
1993
Jane Campion becomes the first female director to win a Palme d'Or, for The Piano.
1994
Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction wins the Palme d'Or. Atom Egoyan's Exotica wins the International Critics Prize.
1996
Canadian David Cronenberg's film Crash splits the audience and, reportedly, the jury. It finally walks away with a special award for "audacity." The top prize goes to Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies.
1997
Sarah Polley, starring in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, describes Cannes as "the most sophisticated and tacky place I've ever been to." Egoyan's film takes the Grand Jury Prize.
1998
Roberto Benigni wins the Grand Prize, dropping down on the ground to kiss jury president Martin Scorsese's feet.
2000
Lars von Trier finally breaks through, winning the Palme d'Or for Dancer in the Dark, his musical melodrama starring pop star Bjork.
2002
Holocaust survivor Roman Polanski wins the Palme for The Pianist, about a Jewish musician hiding from the Nazis in Poland.
2003
Gus Van Sant's Elephant, inspired by the Columbine high school killings, wins the top prize and Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny is declared by many critics to be the worst movie in the history of the festival. Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions, revisiting characters from The Decline of the American Empire, wins two awards at Cannes.
2004
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 wins the Palme d'Or, a decision that is generally understood to represent the international film community's rejection of the American government's war in Iraq.
2006
With his eighth film in competition in Cannes, Ken Loach finally wins the Palme d'Or with The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film about the Irish struggle for independence.
Liam Lacey
Liam Lacey