Cannes Film Festival: why the Palme d'Or no longer fills cinemas

Is the French public still interested in the winners of the Cannes Film Festival? The last big success of a palme d'or goes back 30 years. Where did the popular enthusiasm caused by The Wages of Fear, A Man and a Woman or Apocalypse Now go? Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino is the last Palme d'Or to have met with great popular success in France. With 2.86 million admissions, it ranked 8th at the box office of films released in 1994, according to the specialized site CBO Box Office.

Cannes served as a springboard for the career of this young 31-year-old director, who then only had Reservoir Dogs in his pocket. And reciprocally, the "faquin" of the cinema - as Jean-Luc Godard nicknamed him - will work for the legend of the festival.

Since then, no "palmed" film has reached the top 10 of the French box office, whereas twelve had achieved this feat between 1949 and 1994. In recent times, only one, the pamphlet Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore, ranked in the top 20. And the headliner of the last decade, Parasite by Korea's Bong Joon-ho, only came 26th in the 2019 rankings with 1.94 million admissions. Until 1994, the Palmes d'Or attracted an average of 1.72 million spectators, compared to 812,000 since then. Or half less.

It was The Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot, awarded in 1953, which attracted the most with 6.94 million spectators. But this explosive film belongs to a time when the crowd in dark rooms was twice as high as today.

At equal attendance, Apocalypse Now is undoubtedly the biggest popular success for a Palme d'Or, with 4.54 million admissions. Winner in 1979, Coppola's legendary fresco on the Vietnam War ranked 2nd at the French box office and concentrated 2.55% of admissions that year. Two records for one palm. It is thus the only palm with Pulp Fiction and The piano lesson of Jane Campion (1993) to have represented more than 2% of the total admissions of the year. By way of comparison, the all-category champion of admissions, Titanic, in 1998 concentrated 12% of tickets sold. Proportionally lower, admissions to A Man and a Woman by Lelouch (4.27 million in 1966), The Cheetah (3.65 million in 1963) or even Taxi Driver (8th at the box office in 1976 with 2. 69 million admissions) are now a dream.

Generally speaking, gold palms are rarely popular. Since 1949, of the 82 award-winning films, 42 have not reached the Top 50 at the French box office. Nineteen even remained at the gates of the Top 100. Who remembers The Word given by Brazilian Anselmo Duarte, awarded in 1962, 228th film at the box office with 204,000 admissions? Or Best Intentions (1992) by Bille August, which holds the record for the smallest number of spectators (92,000)? A slap in the face for this autobiographical scenario by Ingmar Bergman.

Over the past ten editions, unpopularity has been at its zenith: eight out of ten palms have not made it into the top 50. respective, Julia Ducournau and Ruben Östlund are on the jury for the 2023 edition, only attracted an informed and small audience.

Cannes preferring auteur films, its gold palms do not compete in the same category as big-budget productions, box-office stars. When Eternity and a Day by the Greek Théo Angelopoulos, Palme d'Or 1998, faces Titanic in theaters, when Amour, Michael Haneke's drama, comes out the same year as Skyfall, the competition is necessarily unfair.

Avatar, Spider-Man, The Lion King, Star Wars, Harry Potter and other James Bonds... The majority of the box office masters of the last 20 years are films whose envelopes easily exceed 100 million dollars, sometimes the 200 or 300 million. The palmes d'or rarely exceed a budget of 10 million euros.