You have to hand it to the folk at Cannes; they know how to play with the cult of personality. By surprising everyone and appointing Tim Burton, the “sweetly mad” director known for surreal, stylized, pitch-black comic films such as Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, as the President of the Jury for the 63rd annual film festival, they have ensured the Palme d’Or will remain one of the most anticipated and coveted prizes in cinema.
But this is no publicity stunt. Burton deserves it. Few modern American directors have managed with such success to retain such a strong, instantly identifiable visual aesthetic whilst continuing to make a movie virtually every twelve to eighteen months. Burton has achieved this in droves. With the 3D version of Alice in Wonderland due to be released this year, the undisputed king of gothic shows little sign of slowing down.
Describing him as “a visionary craftsman whose 14 feature films reinvent every genre,” Festival President Gilles Jacob said:
“It’s the first time an artist whose origins are in animation will preside over the jury of the Festival de Cannes. A filmmaker with a heart of gold and silver hands, Tim Burton is first and foremost a poet. He’s a magician of visual delights who turns the screen into a faery wonder. We hope his sweet madness and gothic humour will pervade the Croisette, bringing Christmas to all. Christmas and Halloween…”
Accepting the invitation, Tim Burton remarked, “It’s a great honour and I look forward, with my fellow jurors, to watching some great films from around the world. When you think of Cannes, you think of world cinema. And as films have always been like dreams to me, this is a dream come true.”
But, if we did exist in a Burtonian dream (God forbid), who would accompany him on the jury? Here are our suggestions for the Cannes dream team of surrealism:
Luis Bunuel – Salvador Dali’s creative partner, creator of Catherine Deneuve as the most mysterious sex symbol ever and director of 1930’s L’Age D’or (which he presented as “the dream of a madman”), Bunuel’s credentials speak for themselves. But it’s the dream sequence in his brutal social-realist film Los Olvidados (the influence for the Brazilian film City of God) that really takes the breath away.
Max Ophüls – although not primarily regarded as a surrealist director, Ophuls’ pioneering use of extended takes with dolly sweeps and long, complex tracking shots meant the camera would seem to elegantly float through his scenes, creating a cinematic world seemingly completely unaware of the camera’s presence, as if it were a ghost. The opening sequence of the sprawling Le Plaisir, in which the camera moves serenely through a room full of ballroom dancers, was both visionary and unique.
Alfred Hitchcock – The Hitch is there because he conceived and directed the film Vertigo, which boasts a) Kim Novak’s haunting performance, b) Jimmy Stewart’s nightmare of nightmares and c) the 360 degree, multi-coloured kiss sequence between the two of them. Need we say more? If anyone disagrees with that choice, they deserve to have their eyes removed.
Georges Méliès – known as the ‘Cinemagician’ due to his ability to transform reality, Méliès is undoubtedly one of the most progressive figures in cinematic history. After accidentally discovering the stop trick in 1896, he was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography and dissolves. The hand-painted films he was influential in inventing, in which each separate celluloid frame was painstakingly hand-painted, has got to be the most surreal visions ever made real. In other words, a dream come true
