First Canne Film Festival - September 20, 1946

The first ever Canne Film Festival began in Canne, France

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Welcome back to This Day in History Class,
where we reveal a new piece of history every day.
Today is September. The day was September nine, the first

(00:28):
ever Can Film Festival began in cann France. The festival
is now an important showcase for films from all over
the world and is attended by tens of thousands of people.
The Can Film Festival was supposed to debut in September
of nineteen nine. By that time, the Venice Film Festival
had been held annually for several years and was giving

(00:51):
out awards for films. But the Venice Film Festival had
also been tainted by fascists and Nazi propaganda. So France,
with the support of the U S and Britain, decided
to establish its own international film festival. The press even
reported on the opening of the film festival in nineteen
thirty nine. One article Time magazine published in July of

(01:13):
that year noted the influence of Mussolini on the Venice
Film Festival. It said, quote two years ago be Mussolini
began to take a personal political interest in the cinema business,
and last year Cinema industries not betted in the Rome
Berlin Axis began to fill its centrifugal force. The number
one prize, the Mussolini Cup, went jointly to not See

(01:37):
Lenny Reffin Stalls nineteen thirty six Olympic Games film four
hours running time, and to Vitoria Mussolini's Luciano sera Pilota,
an ecstatic drama of Italian wings over Ethiopia. The article
went on to say that the Canned Film Festival would
be held that year from September three to seventeen. A

(01:57):
Casino and Can agreed to host the festival. Films were
selected to be showcased at the festival and filmmakers began
traveling to the city in August, but World War Two
broke out in September, bringing plans for an international film
festival and Can to a halt. Once World War two
was over, France returned to the idea of hosting a

(02:18):
film festival and Can to bring tourists back to the area.
On September twentie nine, the Canned Film Festival opened at
a Casino. Twenty one countries presented films at the inaugural festival,
though there were awards given there was no Palm Madore,
which is the award given for the best film at
CAN Today. A New York Times article noted that no

(02:41):
prize was given for a single best film for quote
diplomatic reasons, but an international Jury prize was given to
the Battle of the Rails by Renee Clement. Nine films
were given the Grand Prix, the highest prize at the time.
Some of the films shown were The Lost Weekend by
Lee Wilder, Wet Paint by Walt Disney, Gaslight by George Kuker,

(03:04):
and Beauty and the Beast by Jean Cocteau. The festival
struggled for the next several years. In nineteen forty seven,
the festival faced financial difficulties and inefficiency. The building that
was supposed to host the event, the Palais de Festival,
was not finished, and the film roles for Alfred Hitchcock's

(03:25):
Notorious were shown in reverse order. In nineteen forty and
nineteen fifty the can Film Festival was not held at
all because of budgetary issues, but by nineteen fifty two
the Palais de Festival was the permanent home for the festival.
The festival also moved to Spring so that it was
not in direct competition with the Venice Film Festival. Since then,

(03:49):
the Canned Film Festival has attracted more tourists impressed attention,
has dealt with more challenges of festival production, and has
been the subject of a number of controversies. It is
now considered one of the most prestigious film festivals in
the world. I'm each jef Code and hopefully you know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

(04:11):
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