Village Voice critic J. Hoberman proposed that we make it a 10 Best and 10 Worst Palmes list and we solicited from him a personal list of 10 Worst: New Yorker film editor Richard Brody submitted a brief list with the following observations: “This is a fun question that is hard to answer seriously, because 1) there are a bunch I haven’t seen, and 2) a serious answer would take into account the other movies in competition each year that these winners beat out and the respondents’ sense of whether the juries’ choices were good ones. To take two years chosen at random, 1991: Barton Fink is a nice movie, but it was up against Malina (Werner Schroeter) and Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat), two vastly superior films. 1957: Friendly Persuasion beat out Funny Face, The Nights of Cabiria, and A Man Escaped. 1946: Brief Encounter beat Open City. The more you look, the worse it gets; it’s easy to conclude that the best film in competition almost never won.
A Man and a WomanClaude Lelouch, 1966
Barton FinkJoel & Ethan Coen, 1991
The MissionRoland Joffé, 1986
Paris, TexasWim Wenders, 1984
Pelle the ConquerorBille August, 1988
The Best IntentionsBille August, 1992
Black OrpheusMarcel Camus, 1959
The Umbrellas of CherbourgJacques Demy, 1964
When Father Was Away on BusinessEmir Kusturica, 1985
The Wind that Shakes the BarleyKen Loach, 2006 Another thing this list reveals is that Cannes is often five to 10 years behind the curve on the work of most filmmakers. For instance, why did Kiarostami win for Taste of Cherry in 1997 and not for more or less anything else he had been doing for the previous 10 years? Why Antonioni in 1966 for Blow-Up and not in 1960 for L’Avventura? Nothing ever for Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette? Bergman, Bresson, Tati, Rossellini, Fassbinder, Jia Zhangke?”
Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese, 1976
The Leopard Luchino Visconti, 1963
Viridiana Luis Buñuel, 1961
The Conversation Francis Ford Coppola, 1979
The Third Man Carol Reed, 1949
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy, 1964
Rosetta Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1999
Blow-Up Michelangelo Antonioni, 1967
Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola, 1979
The Wages of Fear Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953
La Dolce Vita Federico Fellini, 1960
Othello Orson Welles, 1952
Under the Sun of Satan Maurice Pialat, 1987
Taste of Cherry Abbas Kiarostami, 1997
If… Lindsay Anderson, 1969
The Tree of Wooden Clogs Ermanno Olmi, 1978
The Cranes are Flying Mikhail Kalatozov, 1958
Kagemusha Akira Kurosawa, 1980
Padre Padrone Paolo & Vittorio Taviani, 1977
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days Cristian Mungiu, 2007
The Ballad of Narayama Shohei Imamura, 1983
Brief Encounter David Lean, 1946
The Working Class Goes to Heaven Elio Petri, 1972
The Go-Between Joseph Losey, 1971
The Eel Shohei Imamura, 1997
Pulp Fiction Quentin Tarantino, 1994
The Tin Drum Volker Schlöndorff, 1979
Wild at Heart David Lynch, 1990
Underground Emir Kusturica, 1995
L’Enfant Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2005
