Cannes at Home: The Best Palme d'Or Winners Ever!
Saturday, July 17, 2021 at 11:00AM It's time to end the Cannes at Home project. Hopefully, these daily posts haven't been a bore. For me, as a writer and film lover, they've been a blast, a sparkling antidote to Cannes-induced FOMO. Thank you so much for reading along. Finally, to end on something special, I decided to rank all Palme d'Or winners from 1949 to 2019, eighty winners in all. For brevity's sake and because it's my birthday and I don't want to dwell on negativity, this write-up is only focused on the top ten, my absolute favorites of the bunch. If you're interested, the complete ranking's on my Letterboxd or you can read an old version of it on the Portuguese website Magazine.HD. And now, without further ado, here are my choices for the best Palme d'Or winners of all time…
10) PARASITE (2019) Bong Joon-Ho
One of the best Oscar champions to conquer AMPAS' biggest prize, the first non-English Best Picture winner, also happens to be one of the greatest films to be rewarded with the top honor at the Croisette. This uncategorizable masterpiece is undeniable, an intersection of sublime technique and savage social commentary, sagacious set design, and unimprovable acting. Not even the Academy could resist. Indeed, the magnetism it exudes is mind-bending. When I was unsure if movies would ever move me to tears again, Parasite did. All it took was a perfect montage and some nifty peach fuzz. Thank you for rekindling the flame of my hope.
Streaming on Hulu and Kanopy. You can also rent it on most services.
09) THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS (1978) Ermanno Olmi
Looking like a Millet painting come to life, Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs concerns the life of 19th-century peasants in the Italian region of Bergamo, Lombardy. While its three-plus hours may intimidate a prospective viewer, this immersion into the historical past is a besotting work. Structured through a collection of short scenes mostly framed in wide shots, there's a sense of quickness to The Tree of Wooden Clogs' seasonal storytelling, lives changing as trees change their foliage. It's cinematic poetry, a hymn for the working class, as simple as it is beautiful.
Streaming on The Criterion Channel. You can also rent it on many platforms.
08) THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964) Jacques Demy
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg I see today isn't the same film I saw in college or high school. It's not that Demy's lush musical has changed, but that I have. Growing along with it, one finds new reasons to love the Technicolor melancholia, discovering new meanings along the way. Some of the best films have these mysterious properties, making a snowy farewell tragic one year, a pragmatic conclusion the next. Wait a bit of time, and the tragedy is back, though not the same sort that might have come through in teenaged years. It's the tragedy of growing up and out of young love. It's a process made of equal parts jubilation and yearning for what is lost in an adult's memory of youth.
Streaming on HBO Max, the Criterion Channel, and Kanopy. You can also rent it on some platforms.
07) THE TREE OF LIFE (2011) Terrence Malick
An epiphany, an explosion of euphoria, pure ecstasy – such are words one could use to describe the majesty of Malick's The Tree of Life. From the Big Bang to the end of days, the film feels like it contains the entire universe within its celluloid dream. Emmanuel Lubezki has never shot a more breathtaking movie, one where an abstract flame can be both the beginning of everything that has ever existed and just the start of a single life. In this temple of cinema, those concepts can live in communion, so intertwined that it's impossible to know where one ends and the other starts.
Available to rent on several platforms.
06) ALL THAT JAZZ (1979) Bob Fosse
The curtains rise, the stage is set, the lights shine bright – It's showtime! As the spectacle is about to start, Angels of Death beckon to their warm bosom, neglected daughters perform accusations as Burlesque, and old lovers dance up a storm of furious grief. Nearly predicting his end, Bob Fosse reshapes Fellini's ideas of a cineaste's autobiography into a sing-song hyper-choreographed self-portrait complete with jazz hands and spangles as far as the eye can see. Cruel vivisection of the artist by his own hand, All That Jazz is a glorious distillation of all things Fosse.
You can find All That Jazz on Blu-Ray and DVD. The film even has a Criterion edition.
05) THE LEOPARD (1963) Luchino Visconti
An epic mural about dying aristocracy, The Leopard could have only been directed by Luchino Visconti. A nobleman communist, the director presents the necessary end of an era while also showing empathy, even sympathy, to those who must now confront their obsolescence. He understands their pain while celebrating their downfall. This museum-like recreation of 19th century Italy is immersive in its material detail and lively ideals, but the camera always knows when to maintain the distance. As much as it is about the people on screen, The Leopard is the ultimate cinematic representation of historical movements, their unstoppable nature, and the miracle of progress.
Streaming on the Criterion Channel. You can also rent it on many platforms.
04) THE CONVERSATION (1974) Francis Ford Coppola
The 70s were a decade defined by paranoia, on and off the screen. Many of the essential films of New Hollywood Cinema are works dominated by that idea, by an ever-present unease, a suspicion that's marrow-deep. Coppola plays with POVs and the unknowability of what is hidden by the frame's limits by working with audiovisual idioms to create this inchoate mood. The Conversation is a wondrous hallucination of thriller filmmaking, an era-defining experience where subjectivity is centered so vehemently that human perception itself becomes the primal source of unrest. It also features the best performance in Gene Hackman's career, which is a big plus.
Streaming on Hulu, Paramount+, Epix, and Sling TV. You can also rent it on various platforms.
03) THE THIRD MAN (1949) Carol Reed
If the 1970s were the decade of paranoia, the latter half of the 40s were an age of nihilism. Reeling from the immediate trauma of World War II and the Holocaust, filmmakers worldwide explored the darkest depths of the human soul, perfecting the film noir as the perfect genre of its time. Set in the smoldering ruins of Vienna and shot like a shattering chiaroscuro nightmare, The Third Man is one of the most hopeless titles of this cinematic tradition. But, perchance because of that, it's also a haunting film. Long after the screen has faded to black, visions of spiritual rot persist in the mind. The Third Man is thus like a glistening dark diamond of evil crystallized.
Streaming on the Criterion Channel and IndieFlix. You can also rent it on many platforms.
02) VIRIDIANA (1961) Luis Buñuel
There are audacious filmmakers, and then there is Luis Buñuel. Viridiana, a film he directed during a brief visit to Franco's Spain in the early 1960s, is the most outrageous of his works, spitting on the face of the dictator with feverish delight. Furthermore, it's a jovial attack on the Catholic Church, and its hypocrisies, their support of fascistic oppression materialized in the figure of an aristocrat who wants to molest his nun niece. There's also a profanation of the Last Supper iconography and much more. Finally, Viridiana is a carnivalesque pageant of provocations, all of them presented with such feral angry conviction we have no choice but to applaud.
Streaming on the Criterion Channel and Kanopy. You can also rent it on Apple iTunes and Amazon Video.
1) THE PIANO (1993) Jane Campion
The first woman ever to win the Palme d'Or is also, in my opinion, the greatest victor in the award's history. Campion is my champion, a formidable cineaste whose work is constructed out of a negative gesture. She defines stories by what we don't see, what's denied, both by the camera and characters. Yet, paradoxically, hers is a cinema of viscerally detailed imagery. Erotic, sensual, alternatively brutal and delicate, her shots are so textured they feel tactile, gorgeous but never postcard-ready. As for The Piano, it's the director's top achievement, the kind of life-changing picture that can reframe how someone sees and appreciates art, how they regard the world, and understand themselves. It's the kind of thing that, by its mere existence, justifies cinema's purpose, its longevity, and, one hopes, its immortality.
Available to rent on Amazon Video, Vudu, Redbox, Apple iTunes, and AMC On Demand.
What films make up your Palme d'Or top 10? Would you please share the answer in the comments?
Cannes, Cannes at Home, Palme d'Or, Top Ten
Reader Comments (19)
1 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
2 - La Dolce Vita
3 - Taxi Driver
4 - Taste of Cherry
5 - Kagemusha
6 - Apocalypse Now
7 - The Conversation
8 - Parasite
9 - Paris, Texas
10 - Blow-Up
10.Blow-up
9.Underground
8.The conversation
7.Parasite
6.Pulp fiction
5.Viridiana
4.The white ribbon
3.Taxi driver
2.Apocalypse now!
1.La dolce vita
Obvious and unapologetic '90s bias here:
10. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
9. Barton Fink
8. Taxi Driver
7. Parasite
6. Dancer in the Dark
5. Sex, lies and videotape
4. The Third Man
3. All That Jazz
2. The Piano
1. Pulp Fiction
Cannes has a much better track record than other festivals or the Oscars....
The Ballad of Narayama
Blowup
The Leopard
Miss Julie
Paris, Texas
Third Man
Tin Drum
Viridiana
The Wages of Fear
Winter Sleep
Elephant
La Dolce Vita
The Leopard
If ...
Blow-Up
The Pianist
The Conversation
Taxi Driver
Barton Fink
Parasite
Two through ten chronologically.
1946 Maria Candelaria
1955 Marty
1956 The Silent World
1949 The Third Man
1953 The Wages of Fear
1964 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
1976 Taxi Driver
1979 Apocalypse Now
2019 Parasite
Best of the Palme d'Or Winners
sex, lies and videotape
In 1989, sex, lies and videotape was nothing short of revolutionary.
The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Best Feature Film at the Independent Spirit Awards and the Audience Award at Sundance. The thrill of a simple movie about ideas shot on videotape empowered struggling filmmakers and fed the belief that the studio system was dying. No surprise that the Oscars failed to embrace the independent film fave. The fantasy was that anyone could be Steven Soderbergh, write a screenplay in eight days and shoot it in four weeks on a miniscule budget.
All of that was thrilling, but it was the content of sex, lies and videotape that riveted its young urban audience. Graham (well played by James Spader) is an intriguing hero. He is impotent. Sexual gratification comes from listening to women. Men weren’t listening to women in late ’80s. They certainly weren’t engaged in understanding a woman’s attitudes toward her sexuality. Graham has stacks of videotape where he listens. Women, even repressed women like Ann, leap at the opportunity to be heard. The idea was startling. There is no physical nudity in sex, lies and videotape. Rather, it is the raw emotion bared that seduces the viewer.
Listen to and look at the opening sequence. As we watch Graham traveling to visit his college buddy John and wife Ann, we listen to Ann talk to her therapist about her life. As we learn she is stalled and emotionally, dissatisfied, the camera makes clear that Graham is moving toward her. Something will change.
Sound becomes key to the artistic success of the film. Audiences were long familiar with Robert Altman’s trademark over lapping dialogue. Soderbergh takes the concept to a new dimension. Sound from the previous scene would continue in the next. Voices from the next shot were heard early, sometimes a remarkable length of time before the visual moved forward. The manipulation of sound created a sense that there was no longer a sense of true privacy.
It fed this gnawing nugget of awareness that technical advances were invading our most intimate moments. We may not be exhibitionists, at least not intentionally. Intimacy was changing. sex, lies and videotape didn’t provide answers but rather provoked conversation.
All great films, ranking based on response after first viewing:
10. Barton Fink
9. sex, lies and videotape
8. Blow-Up
7. If...
6. La Doce Vita
5. L'enfant
4. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
3. Elephant
2. The Ballad of Narayama
1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
All That Jazz also contains one of Scheider's best.
At the moment based on my own list so far...
1. Paris, Texas
2. The Conversation
3. Apocalypse Now
4. The Tree of Life
5. La Dolce Vita
6. Blow-Up
7. Taxi Driver
8. Pulp Fiction
9. Black Orpheus
10. Parasite
My wife and I went hiking in Tahoe recently, and during a quiet moment you could hear the wind rustling through the trees. My wife leaned over and said: “every time I hear wind blowing though trees it reminds me of that movie you made me see with Brad Pitt and the kids.”
Farewell My Concubine is better than all of the films listed :/
Paranoid -- this is one of the best anecdotes i've ever heard. LOL. I so relate.
Claudio -- My BEST PALME winners list
01 THE PIANO
02 ALL THAT JAZZ
03 PARASITE
04 UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
05 THE CONVERSATION
06 DANCER IN THE DARK
07 THE CRANES ARE FLYING
08 AMOUR
09 THE CLASS
10 4 MONTHS 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
No chance of ordering here (I just don't have the time to consider), but my top three-twelve:
Viridiana
The Conversation
Shoplifters
I, Daniel Blake
Dheepan
Winter Sleep
Blue Is The Warmest Colour
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Paris, Texas
Apocalypse Now
The Wages Of Fear
Second place goes to Dancer In The Dark
And my top of all time was one of the eleven winners at the very first Cannes, but it is one of the most perfect films ever made, and so... Brief Encounter.
I just realized i forgot SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE -- James, loved your comment. It's such a great film and weirdly underdiscussed today despite how prescient it was in some ways
Paranoid Android what a great anecdote! I need to watch that movie again.
Best Cannes coverage ever! Could a Claudio on the ground Cannes in the future be the catalyst for his inevitable ascension? Looks likely.
Kael, Ebert, Alves.
These posts have most definitely not been a bore. You made the current Cannes coverage look less great by comparison. Turns out A+ retro Cannes posts trumps B- current Cannes posts. Who'd have thunk it?!
Here are my Top 11 (sorry, I couldn't figure out which one to eliminate) in chronological order
The Third Man
Wages of Fear
Viridiana
The Leopard
Kagemusha
When Father Was Away on Business
Pelle the Conqueror
Rosetta
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Amour
Shoplifters
3) The Leopard
4) The Conversation
1) Apocalypse Now
2) All that Jazz
10) The Pianist
5) The Class
5) The White Ribbon
9) Amour
7) Blue is the Warmest Color
8) Parasite
Special honour: Taxi Driver / La Dolce Vita / Elephant