Cannes vs. Oscars

Let The Race Begin!

It's been a while since I completed my collection of all the movies that won Palme d'Or in Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture Oscar in Academy Awards. It's a good collection and I'm proud of it.

I am fond of creating long-term campaigns for myself, which is fun. Following a list of movies which are 'best' according to some authority which I trust to some extent (is a complete trust even possible in this case?) is also educative in the long run because the more you see, the better you judge what you see next. Or so I believe. Seeing the movies that are claimed to the cornerstones of this fairly young art form is always rewarding.

That being said, my two year campaign of seeing all the movies in IMDb Top 250 list was about to come to an end when I decided to obtain these collections. I guess my primary motivation was the thrill of showing them to my friends and hear them gasp, rather than actually seeing the movies. To be honest, I was feeling a bit too idle after IMDb to think and act in a reasonable way.

But then, I had this exciting idea that saved the day: Why not compare every year's Best Picture Oscar and Palme d'Or Winner beginning from 1946, the year when the first Palme d'Or was awarded? (Oscars go way back to 1928 which should automatically give them a head start in this race) These are two of the most prestigious movie awards we're talking about here. Two distinct symbols for two different approaches to the nature of cinema in two distant continents. On the red corner we have the Oscars which represent Hollywood, movies for the masses and art also as a form of entertainment. On the blue corner we have Cannes, the heart of Europe, fighting in the name of 'art for art's sake'. Eternal enemies if you ask me, which makes the race all the more exciting! (and my idea all the more bright)

There are some slight technical difficulties though. First of all, I don't have subtitles for some non-English Cannes movies which says one of two things: 1) I should be prepared to pay to a professional translator a sum that would be adequate for organizing a film festival in my name without the need for any sponsors 2) I cannot watch these movies yet. On the bright side, I don't plan to go in a certain order (because doing so would be boring) therefore I can start off immediately with the pairs that I can watch. We'll see about the rest once I am done with what I have.

Also in Cannes, a tie occurs much more often than it does in Oscars. There are several years where more than one movie won the hearts of the Cannes jury while only one movie was praised by the Academy. I could very well comment on all three movies in these cases without making a final judgement but without reflecting the result on the overall score, it's not really as fun. Therefore I think I'll have to compare the Oscar winner with the arithmetic mean of Palme d'Or winners (whatever that means, we'll find out)

I'll have a scoreboard to record the overall situation of the match for fun, but also I'll try to come up with serious articles that compares and contrasts these movies not only as two random films that I happened to watch one after another but also within the context of which award they won. I'll try to save the final judgement regarding the very nature of these awards to the, well... final. Making generalizations before even seeing the movies doesn't make sense.

In the name of honest blogging, I hereby promise to you that I won't accept bribes of any kind.

Let the game begin.