With Jean Viard, sociologist, director of research at the CNRS, we try every Sunday to answer a social question. Today, the craze for cinema, what does it really represent in our country?
franceinfo: The Cannes Film Festival is popular, but is this festival popular too?
John Viard: The Cannes Film Festival was invented in 1936, so it’s the time when cinema rises a lot, there is the Venice Film Festival which had been done before in 1932. Then there is someone called Philippe Erlang who formed the idea of Festival which at first had to be done elsewhere, then Cannes ended up winning because it had great hotels. Jean Zay, who was a very, very great Minister of Education and Fine Arts, who also invented the CNRS, which was executed by the militia but who played a great role in artistic and university innovation. Remember this name of Jean Zay. He wrote a wonderful book called Memories and loneliness.
That’s that time, that is to say before the war. And then post-war cinema has become an extraordinary element of society, in particular, obviously driven by Hollywood, which has made it an ideological combat machine. For the Americans, it was the western, it’s always the white man who wins, the women are all lovely, a certain body of women with flat stomachs, two children, well a whole ideology, an American culture, Coca-Cola, etc…
So it’s a cultural weapon. And basically, the Cannes Film Festival is our participation, so it is old, it was very important. The cinema may no longer have the role it had in the 50s and 80s when it was the popular outlet. There were huge cinemas, people went there in huge crowds, etc. It has changed, I think.
On the planet, there are more and more cinemas in reality, because the world is big and there are sides that are developing. But in France, there is a certain drop, the pandemic obviously accelerated the phenomenon, half of cinema customers have barely returned, so there is a drop. The festival is the same: there are a few fewer people watching, before it was on Canal and now it’s on France 2. So somewhere, there is a certain disaffection. The red carpet and the actresses with extraordinary dresses, is that still the feminine imagination today? This is not obvious.
Could it also be that the festival has not been able to adapt to our image of stars today? Actress Greta Garbo, is there the equivalent today? I am not sure. And then there is competition from Netflix, from series. At dinner parties, what do you talk about with your friends? It is rather from a last series that we have seen. We do without the names of series, etc… It is also perhaps that there is competition in creation, in speed also because the series go extremely fast.
There’s a lot of events happening, there’s a lot of work on the scripts and also all these competitions at the moment that are making cinema suffer and I think the great pandemic hasn’t helped it, but it’s not dead. It is an absolutely major art, so it will find its place.
With this question which currently animates these great masses of cinema, these awards such as the Oscars, the Césars, the Cannes Film Festival. What place do we give to films that are not screened in theaters, but only on these platforms? That’s another debate.
We know the requirement, the rigor of this Cannes festival, especially in the pre-selected films, the awards. Is it precisely an opening to the general public, of very interesting films to which they would not necessarily have access, if not a highlight or then a form of elitism?
I wouldn’t say that. Of course, there is a form of inter-self because it is not a popular jury. It’s not done over the Internet. It is effectively the world of cinema which gives itself hierarchies. There are consecration prizes etc. It is true that there are years when less than a million people watch the closing on TV. The big years were above 2 million, 2.5 million 20 years ago. So there is quite a noticeable change. I wouldn’t call it elitist.
Of course, cinema is a dream. They are exceptional people who lead exceptional lives. They are always in love, all the time, etc. Well, of course, we hope it’s everyone’s life, but it’s not like that every day. So there is a gap, but that’s also what makes the dream come true, it’s the distance. It was like the Greek gods, they were different. It’s like all those icons that societies invent to tell stories. It’s both us and not us. So we are in this game.