When the 64th Cannes film festival opens on 11 May, no one will get closer to the stars than Gilles Traverso – a photographer for the local papers, whose family have had unique access to the world's greatest actors for 70 years
From the first, the Cannes film festival was a media event. The films in competition had to be seen indoors, in a sacrosanct darkness from which photographers were excluded. By way of compensation, festivities in the open air gave the paparazzi a diversion. Convoys of horse-drawn carriages or open-topped cars crawled through town displaying the stars, with flower petals fluttering from on high. Photo ops cannily accentuated national stereotypes: Yves Montand stationed himself on a bench poring over Le Monde, Glenn Ford more energetically bounced on a trampoline or rode in a go-cart, and Ugo Tognazzi gave a cooking demonstration in the surf, ladling spaghetti out of a vat.
The stars were offered to the cameras,...
From the first, the Cannes film festival was a media event. The films in competition had to be seen indoors, in a sacrosanct darkness from which photographers were excluded. By way of compensation, festivities in the open air gave the paparazzi a diversion. Convoys of horse-drawn carriages or open-topped cars crawled through town displaying the stars, with flower petals fluttering from on high. Photo ops cannily accentuated national stereotypes: Yves Montand stationed himself on a bench poring over Le Monde, Glenn Ford more energetically bounced on a trampoline or rode in a go-cart, and Ugo Tognazzi gave a cooking demonstration in the surf, ladling spaghetti out of a vat.
The stars were offered to the cameras,...
- 4/30/2011
- by Peter Conrad
- The Guardian - Film News
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