THE U.S. TOOK CANNES--OR WAS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?

Those who feel the French have been guilty of anti-American behavior in recent months may be surprised to learn that the jurors at the Cannes Film Festival have awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or to an American movie. On the other hand, not every U.S. citizen will rush out to see the movie when Lions Gate releases it here later this year. That’s because "Elephant"--directed by Gus Van Sant ("Drugstore Cowboy," "To Die For," "Good Will Hunting" and the pitiful remake of "Psycho")--depicts a high school massacre that mirrors the tragedy at Columbine. The cast, consisting largely of actual high school students, is topped by Alex Frost as a baby-faced, gay, neo-nazi assassin.

In a double triumph, Van Sant also won the award as Best Director. The following excerpt from the review by Variety’s Todd McCarthy would seem to indicate that Stateside critics may not echo the enthusiasm of the festival jury:

"To make a film about something like the Columbine student shootings incident and provide no insight or enlightenment would seem to be pointless at best and irresponsible at worst, and that is what Gus Van Sant has done in ‘Elephant’…this small-scale HBO Films offering achieves some glancing poetic effects during its first hour, but becomes gross and exploitative during the shooting rampage of the final act…And while it is clearly not Van Sant's intent to offer a facile explanation for why two teenage boys marched into their high school with assault weapons with the aim of picking off as many of their fellow students as possible, he does so when he reveals the killers to be gay-inclined Nazis! You might have expected such a characterization of young renegades from a hack Hollywood screenwriter, but not from Van Sant. Yet there the boys are, one of them playing Beethoven on the piano while the other plays a violent video game, then watching an old Hitler documentary and making out in the shower before setting off on their rampage."

Although "Elephant" is the first American film to walk off with the top prize at Cannes since 1994, it cannot be said that the French have slighted U.S. fare over the years. The very first recipient of the Palme d’Or was "Marty"—a sleeper that went on to win four Oscars, including one for Best Picture of 1955.

U.S. WINNERS AT CANNES

MARTY (1955) DIRECTOR: Delbert Mann. CAST: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Joe Mantell, Joe De Santis, Esther Minciotti, Jerry Paris, Karen Steele. A homely Bronx butcher falls in love with a plain--but inwardly beautiful--woman.

FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1957) DIRECTOR: William Wyler CAST: Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Marjorie Main, Phyllis Love, Richard Eyer, Robert Middleton, Mark Richman, Walter Catlett, William Schallert. Quaker parents have conflicting feelings about their son's decision to fight in the Civil War.

M*A*S*H* (1970) DIRECTOR: Robert Altman CAST: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Jo Ann Pflug, Rene Auberjonois, Fred Williamson, John Schuck, Bud Cort. A heroic medical unit shows remarkably little respect for the military code during the Korean War.

SCARECROW (1973) DIRECTOR: Jerry Schatzberg CAST: Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Dorothy Tristan, Eileen Brennan, Ann Wedgeworth, Richard Lynch. Two losers without much in the way of roots team up, take to the highway, and drift cluelessly through some fairly dismal American landscape.

THE CONVERSATION (1974) DIRECTOR: Francis Ford Coppola CAST: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Michael Higgins, Elizabeth MacRae, Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall. An ace surveillance agent puts his life at risk when he tunes into a secret, sinister chat.

TAXI DRIVER (1976) DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese CAST: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Leonard Harris, Joe Spinell, Martin Scorsese, Harry Northup, Steven Prince, Diahnne Abbott. Blistering portrait of New York City as the filth-hole of the world.

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) DIRECTOR: Francis Ford Coppola CAST: Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, G. D. Spradlin, Harrison Ford, Scott Glenn, Colleen Camp. A special agent has orders to travel into Cambodia during the Vietnam War and kill an American officer who's gone way over the top.

ALL THAT JAZZ (1980) DIRECTOR: Bob Fosse CAST: Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer, Cliff Gorman, Ben Vereen, Erzsebet Foldi, John Lithgow, Keith Gordon, Nicole Fosse, Wallace Shawn, Chris Chase. A workaholic director has a heart attack, teeters on the edge of death and dredges up scenes from his seedy life in Fosse's unsparing semi-autobiographical extravaganza.

MISSING (1982) DIRECTOR: Costa-Gavras CAST: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Charles Cioffi, David Clennon, Janice Rule. An American businessman and his daughter-in-law search frantically for a young idealist who has vanished in a turbulent Latin American country.

SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE (1989) DIRECTOR: Steven Soderbergh CAST: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo. A friend from his college days pays a visit to a bored lawyer and livens things up considerably.

WILD AT HEART (1990) DIRECTOR: David Lynch CAST: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton, Crispin Glover, Grace Zabriskie, J. E. Freeman, Calvin Lockhart, David Patrick Kelly, Freddie Jones, John Lurie, Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Fast driving, hard fighting, hot lusting and various other sinful diversions in the deep, surreal South.

BARTON FINK (1991) DIRECTOR: Joel Coen CAST: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi. A promising playwright is lured to Hollywood, where he suffers from writer's block and total cultural shock.

PULP FICTION (1994), DIRECTOR: Quentin Tarantino CAST: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken, Bruce Willis, Quentin Tarantino. A mesmerizingly unsavory lot of low-lifers rampage through dark, forbidding turf in the apparent belief that they are masters of the universe.

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