Five eye-opening facts about Cannes
The Cannes film festival opens on Wednesday in the French Riviera resort. Here are five essential - and often surprising - facts about the glitzy Mediterranean town
It nearly didn’t happen
Timing is everything in cinema, they say, but as Cannes was to prove that’s not always the case. France’s great reforming education minister Jean Zay first came up with the idea of a global film festival in 1939 as a rival to the Venice festival, which was then the plaything of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his film-loving German friend Adolf Hitler.
Biarritz on France’s Atlantic coast was first chosen to host it, but when it couldn’t raise the money, Cannes nipped in. However, war soon broke out and Mussolini’s troops marched into the town.
It wasn’t until after the war in 1946 that the festival finally got going, quickly becoming the most important in the world.
By then Zay was dead, murdered because he was a Jew by France’s collaborationist government. His ashes were moved to the Pantheon in Paris in 2015 as one of the leading heroes of the French Resistance.
Lap of luxury
The myth of the French Riviera was created at the end of the 19th century by the crowned heads of Europe who wintered there. Their legacy -- and often their palatial villas -- has nowadays been taken up by Russian oligarchs and wealthy Gulf potentates.
To serve their every whim, Cannes has more luxury goods shops than anywhere else in France outside Paris. Chanel, Chopard, Rolex, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Dior... no less than 70 top name brands have shops squeezed into the 800 metres (2,600 feet) of its seafront Croisette.
Cat burglars
Like bears to honey, where there is great wealth, there are always criminals eager to redirect a little of it their way.
The Croisette has witnessed some of the biggest and most daring jewellery heists in history.