Le Cinéma de la Plage is opening with a French duo

Henri Verneuil’s 100,000 Dollars au Soleil (Greed in the Sun) will launch the Cinéma de la Plage this year. Made in 1964, this was the second film that Henri Verneuil made with Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor to whom the Festival de Cannes is paying tribute this year, and it served to strengthen the complicity between them.

Only two years after their first collaboration in Un Singe en hiver (A Monkey in Winter), Henri Verneuil and Jean-Paul Belmondo came together to shoot 100,000 Dollars au Soleil (Greed in the Sun). This feature-length adventure brought Lino Ventura in the role of Marec face to face with the stunt actor Belmondo playing Rocco. When Rocco absconds with a secret shipment of a hundred thousand dollars on the fringe of the desert in the heart of Africa, Marec is given the task of getting the truck with the money back.
The film was selected in Compétition at the Festival de Cannes in 1964. And the duo composed of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Henri Verneuil did not part ways there. Just a few months after the filming, the two cineastes got back together to make Week-end à Zuydcoot (Weekend at Dunkirk). Another four film collaborations followed from 1971, with Le Casse (The Burglars), until 1984 with Les Morfalous. In total, they made seven feature films together in 22 years.
The opening of the Cinéma de la Plage is also marked by an innovation: the screening of short programmes before each feature film. Made from François Chalais’s famous television programmes, Reflets de Cannes and Cinépanorama, this series of ten films revives the glamorous atmosphere and passion for the cinema that animated the Festival de Cannes in the 1950s and 60s, with a theme for each programme, highlighting a different actress or film.

A.C.

The film will be screened at 9:30 p.m. on the Plage Macé and will be preceded by a screening of short programmes: “Reflets sur la Croisette.”