Godard Leads Directors to Shut Down Cannes Film Festival

Directors Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Roman Polanski and Louis Malle (standing) on strike during the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 1968. (Traverso / RDA / Getty Images)

While millions of workers were on strike in France and students were pouring into the streets, directors like Godard were furious that the culture minister André Malraux had fired Henri Langlois, the revered founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

The revolutionary fervor soon encroached upon the small Riviera town of Cannes itself. The film festival opened as planned on May 10, 1968, but nine days later, Godard and other directors, including François Truffaut and Claude Lelouch, led a group of cine-revolutionaries bent on shutting down the proceedings. They succeeded, in the process committing a strange, volatile, endlessly mythologized episode to the annals of Cannes history.

Directors withdrew their movies. Members of the competition jury resigned, including Roman Polanski, Monica Vitti and Louis Malle. In the most memorably chaotic episode, protesters took the stage at an afternoon screening of Carlos Saura's competition entry, "Peppermint Frappé," an act that climaxed with the spectacle of Godard, Truffaut, Saura and his star Geraldine Chaplin hanging from the theater curtains.

Those who led the Cannes '68 shutdown were effectively calling on the French film industry to express support for the demonstrators. But as with every revolution, not everyone was on the same philosophical page. Truffaut called for a complete halt to the festival; Godard initially proposed an overhaul that would do away with awards and replace programmed films with documentary footage from the ongoing events.

"I'm talking about solidarity with the students and workers, and you're talking about tracking shots and close-ups!" Godard famously spat at someone who opposed closing the festival. To put it another way: At a time like this, how could anyone sit around watching movies?

Sources:

In May 1968, the Cannes Film Festival ground to a halt. Fifty years later, it's still sparking controversy, by Justin Chang  LA Times, April 20, 2018