They Loved it in France: American Palme d'Or winners

By Kyle Matthies

I don’t know about you, but I am elated about Sean Baker’s Anora winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. Baker is a talented voice known for movies such as The Florida Project, Tangerine, and my personal second favorite movie of 2021, Red Rocket. His films typically utilize non-actors to tell stories set in contemporary America, highlighting unheard voices from American’s lower class in a poignant, humorous way. Considering the high quality of his previous works, I can only imagine what Anora has in store for us when it releases this coming October.

For those unaware of the award, the Palme d’Or is the top prize given annually at the Cannes Film Festival in France, and is often seen as the highest award a film can win alongside Best Picture at the Oscars. Unlike the Oscars though, Cannes is a truly international competition and the winners of this award come from many different countries across the globe. Since Anora is the first American film to win the prize since 2011’s The Tree of Life over a decade ago, I wanted to take the chance to examine and recommend four previous instances of American Films taking home the top prize at the festival.

Marty (1955) Directed by Delbert Mann

I’ve wanted to watch Marty for a very long time because until Parasite released in 2019 Marty was the only film to win both the Palme d’Or and Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I knew this movie was about an unattractive bachelor butcher finally getting a chance at love for himself, and I wanted to see how a romance film ended up being the movie to win this unique accolade. I am happy to say that the movie certainly delivers.

What makes Marty so charming and effective as a story is how earnest it all is. This is a very low stakes movie, essentially following just two days in the lives of our characters, starting off with Marty’s daily routine, followed by his first real date, and ending with the day after. The script from writer Paddy Chayefsky is naturalistic, with each character coming off as an authentic person, and the way they evolve through interactions with other is done so effectively that it still feels powerful nearly 70 years later. It’s a character piece through and through, treating each character’s story with the appropriate level of respect, while maintaining a fun, playful tone.

Ernest Borgnine as the titular Marty. Courtesy of United Artists.

Speaking of being earnest, the other reason Marty works so well is the Oscar winning performance of Ernest Borgnine in the title role. Borgnine imbues Marty with a kind, caring attitude that makes the character so likeable, while not shying away from presenting the character’s fears and insecurities as well. It’s a subtle, well-rounded performance that takes some of the best parts of theater acting and puts a cinematic glow on it, creating a fleshed-out, memorable, maybe even relatable character at the heart of a film that I definitely recommend watching.

The Conversation (1974) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

This one’s for the audiophiles out there. Since Anora beat Francis Ford’s latest film, the monstrous Megalopolis, to win the Palme d’Or, it only seemed fitting for me to look at the first time Coppola won the top award at Cannes (he would later win it again in 1979 with Apocalypse Now).

Combining an excellent Gene Hackman performance with a premise that borrows heavily from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Coppola’s The Conversation is a mystery thriller with a sense of paranoid voyeurism. The film follows Harry Caul (Hackman), a surveillance master who is hired by a suspicious client to record the conversation between a seemingly ordinary couple walking around Union Square in San Francisco. Caul’s troubles only begin there, as an attempt to steal these audio tapes convince him that the conversation is the center of a conspiracy, one that he alone must solve before it’s too late.

Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, listening in on a private discussion in “The Conversation.” Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Hackman is great and gives what he considers a career best performance, but that’s not the element of The Conversation I want to highlight, instead I want to talk about the two aspects of the movie that most drew me in, the sense of paranoia the audio design.

The paranoia comes from a sense of irony that you know the seemingly banal conversation being listened to must hold some sort of secret. For Harry Caul, this comes from a knowledge that no one would try and steal the audio if it wasn’t important, but for the audience this comes from an even higher place. You know that the film wouldn’t be made (and certainly wouldn’t be so acclaimed) if this was all a misunderstanding with nothing behind it, so you spiral into the same rabbit hole as the lead, trying to decipher what it all means, rewarding you with a highly satisfying conclusion when it all ends.

A good chunk of this movie is dedicated to art of audio editing as Caul sits and re-listens to the same audio on loop, shifting the pitch and adjusting the noise so he can try to discern any additional info at all. In a lesser film, these scenes would not be exciting, but the audio work here is extraordinary. When you first hear the conversation, it’s a mess of jumbled audio static and background noise that drowns out any chance of hearing the words. What’s so enthralling is how this really feels like what would be recorded on the fly using the equipment of the time. As the story progresses and the audio is edited and replayed, it increases in clarity and what is being said becomes easier to discern. It’s hard to describe in words and deserves to be heard for yourself, but rest assured when I say it is absolutely absorbing to witness and is well worth seeing.

Taxi Driver (1976) Directed by Martin Scorsese

Since there has been plenty of analyses and examinations written about Taxi Driver over the years, I thought I would do something a little different and turn back the page to last week by comparing the New York of Taxi Driver to Woody’s New York I wrote about previously.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone that Taxi Driver’s New York differs greatly from Woody’s. First, on the surface level, Taxi Driver takes place primarily at night, while the sun never seemed to set on Woody’s city. The camera angles also reflect a different portrayal of the city. Taxi Driver gives a car’s-eye view of the streets, focusing on the people that are passed by and utilizing downward camera angles to keep the attention to the street level. Rarely are the tops of buildings ever seen, and the few instances you can see them are steep shots making the city feel cruel and imposing. This is at odds with Woody’s wide angles showing the city as a beautiful, welcoming place.

Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, watching a movie Woody Allen wouldn’t be caught dead watching in “Taxi Driver.” Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Taxi Driver really feels like a corruption of everything Woody’s city holds dear. A lot of the same elements are still there, but they now come across as dirty and unwelcoming. Travis Bickle goes to the movies nearly as much as Woody did, but he’s not watching Ingmar Bergman films, and his date is much less appreciative of his cinematic tastes. One element that pervaded each of last week’s Woody Allen movies was a recurring motif of characters meeting at clubs, bars, and diners for friendly philosophic discussions. The scenes in Taxi Driver with Peter Boyle’s character Wizard are actually rather similar to those. Travis joins Wizard and other cabbies at various establishments where they talk about whatever crosses their minds. The difference is the places they meet are much lower class than anywhere Woody Allen would step into, and their topics are way more sophomoric in comparison. That’s a good microcosm for how these works compare, it’s clearly the same city and the character’s actions reflect this, but Taxi Driver shows a side of NYC that Woody was more than fine with ignoring and vice-versa. The real takeaway is that New York is an eclectic city that no one artist could possibly paint a complete picture of.

Barton Fink (1990) Directed by the Coen Brothers

While it is not one of their more commonly discussed films in the mainstream, Barton Fink is the movie that won the Coen Brothers the Palme d’Or and is, in my opinion, one of the most worthy winners of the lofty award. This is an enigmatic, allegorical film whose open-ended interpretations make it perfect for a cinematic connoisseur looking for an ambiguous film that challenges them to draw their own meaning out of what they just witnessed.

Set in Los Angeles in December of 1941, the film follows the titular Barton Fink (John Turturro), a playwright focusing on dramatizing the life of the common man, who moves to Los Angeles after receiving a picture deal to become a screenwriter. Voluntarily lodging in a decaying Art Deco hotel, Barton’s life quickly falls apart as writer’s block, the solitude of living in a new city, and the state of his living quarters takes their toll on his mental state. His only friend is his next door neighbor Charlie (John Goodman) a friendly insurance salesman who provides Barton with company and support as he struggles to write the wrestling picture he’s been contracted to make.

John Turturro as Barton Fink, losing his mind. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Thematically, the film is about a myriad of topics. Ranging from isolation and the creative experience to the antisemitism prevalent in America at the dawn of the States’ intervention in WW2, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. The film’s damning portrayal of Hollywood depicts a fake city full of deceptive phonies making false promises who would stab you in the back in a heartbeat. Barton himself is a symbol for intellectual dissonance, he claims to be focused on the common man, but he’s so focused on his own pursuits that he’s utterly oblivious to everything else. Barton misses major world events and ignores those around him in pursuit of his own selfish ambitions, all the while being unaware that he’s doing it.

And that’s just scratching the surface of what goes on in this movie. Combine all that with further themes of fascism, the role of creatives in modern society, the idea that behind every talented man is a strong woman, and more and you’ve got more than I can write about in one page. You could write a whole book analyzing Barton Fink so I’m just going to leave it at this: If you haven’t seen it before, do yourself a favor and watch this movie, and if you’ve already seen it, watch it again. You’ll thank me later.