Photo de The African Queen
Cannes Classics under the sign of love
Today’s Cannes Classics programme is placed under the sign of love, with a French comedy that has not been seen for 20 years, Le Grand Amour (aka The Great Love) by Pierre Etaix (1969), showing at 5pm and a great US classic , John Huston’s The African Queen (1951) showing at 7.30pm.
The Cannes Classics programming of Le Grand Amour (1) by Pierre Etaix is a major event. It was only recently, after a long legal battle, that the director succeeded in recovering the rights to his own films. Eight films by Pierre Etaix have now been restored and prepared for re-release. In Competition at Cannes in 1969, Le Grand Amour, which was the first colour film by Jacques Tati’s collaborator and assistant director, has been selected to open this special retrospective. A comic and poetic film, where Pierre (played by Pierre Etaix), though happily married, falls in love with his pretty young secretary and starts dreaming, Le Grand Amour will be screened this evening in the presence of the director.
The couple formed by the crusty sailor and the prudish spinster in The African Queen (2) is just as improbable. But the war means they have no choice but to travel down a dangerous east African river together, and this enforced cohabitation gives rise to a great love story. The African Queen is a war movie, an adventure movie and a romantic movie all rolled into one. It also brings together three cinema legends: John Huston, Katherine Hepburn, and Humphrey Bogart, who won an Oscar for Best Actor for this film.
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(1) Copy restored by Studio 37, the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage and the Fondation Groupama Gan for the cinema.
(2) Copy restored by Paramount Pictures and ITV, with the support of Angelica Huston.
