The Worst
“Godspell” (1973)
There was a run of musical openers in the late 1960s and ’70s, ranging from the pretty good (“Sweet Charity”) to the pretty bad (“Hair”) to the somewhat pointless (anthology film “That’s Entertainment Part II”). One only has to look at something like “Godspell” to realize why only one, “Moulin Rouge!,” has opened Cannes since the start of the 1980s. Adapting the long-running stage hit by John-Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz, it’s a rock opera retelling of the Gospel of St. Matthew set among a bunch of young bohemians in New York, with Victor Garber (better known for stern character actor roles on the likes of “Alias”) as Jesus. Popular at the time, it’s now a relic, with a source material made up of forgettable songs and baffling narrative choices (John The Baptist and Judas Iscariot are the same person, for some reason). The cast are game enough in a slightly creepy musical theater major kind of way, but the direction by TV helmer David Greene is pedestrian and stagy. More than anything, it’s painful —the conceit of mixing religion as told by a ranting Times Square preacher and general post-Woodstock hippie bullshit renders it unwatchable today. It’s hard to imagine that it was ever viable as anything other than as something to show kids on a rainy day at church camp, and harder still that Cannes would pick it to open the festival in a year that, while perhaps not a vintage one, also included Truffaut’s “Day For Night,” Lindsay Anderson’s “O Lucky Man!,” Jerry Schatzberg’s “Scarecrow” and Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain.”
What they said at the time: Surprisingly kind words, to some degree, though the New York Times found it dated even then: Vincent Canby said the film “pretty much reduces the story of Jesus to conform to a kind of flower-child paranoia that was probably more popular three or four years ago than it is today.”
“Pirates” (1986)
Even Roman Polanski‘s hardiest fans, high on contrarian bravado and settling in to watch his notorious flop “Pirates,” will find a single question buzzing round their brains as this turgid film unfolds for what seems like 17 hours: “what the fuck is this shit?” Desperately unfunny, utterly charmless and gifted with about as much dexterity as Walter Matthau‘s one-legged Cap’n Red, the reclamation squad can move along swiftly: nothing to see here. Of course there were factors at play that had little to do with the actual film —pre-production was interrupted, postponed and ultimately uprooted to a new continent after the director was arrested on the rape charge that keeps him out of the U.S. to this day. Yet lack of werewithal can’t be blamed —this is very expensive crap, with Polanski having the film’s Spanish galleon built from scratch and sparing no expense on costumes and extras. But Matthau is squandered (he replaced first choice Jack Nicholson, who reportedly wanted too much money) and there’s no interest to be found in the chemistry-free romance between Cris Campion and British actress Charlotte Lewis, in a role that Lewis would later cite in a 2010 allegation brought against Polanski as the bargaining chip he used to have sex with her at 16. Ugh all round.
What they said at the time: The New York Times review sums it up nicely:”the production design of Pierre Guffroy, as photographed by Witold Sobocinski, is pretty, too, tempting one, unfortunately, to keep watching the screen.”
“Hollywood Ending” (2002)
Woody Allen returns to Cannes this year with “Irrational Man,” and opened the festival a few years back with “Midnight In Paris“ one of his biggest hits. He’s got a long history with the festival, but one element of the history of Woody and Cannes that’s always likely to be glossed over is the first time one of his movies opened the festival. As the title suggests, the film is a movie-biz satire about a director fallen on hard times who gets an offer to make a big-budget movie, only to go psychosomatically blind when the shoot approaches. The premise is almost exactly as one-joke as it sounds, and though Allen gets some decent slapstick gags in early, it gets very tired very fast and ends up feeling like an over-extended “Mr. Magoo” reboot. Tone-deaf and without much insight into the movie industry (which has never really been Allen’s strong point, given that he’s survived outside the system for so long), the film feels unusually slack, in part because of behind-the-scenes turmoil: Allen fired DoP Haskell Wexler after a week and had parted ways with much of his crew, including longtime editor Susan Morse. The movie doesn’t even have the starry cast that’s become Allen’s standard: in the place of A-listers comes a bafflingly low-rent collection of actors including George Hamilton, Tea Leoni, Treat Williams and Debra Messing. It’s hard to call this an absolute nadir for Allen in a decade when he also made “Anything Else,” “Cassandra’s Dream” and “Whatever Works,” but it’s certainly not worthy of being a Cannes opener.
What people said at the time: Short and to the point, Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek said that the film “just isn’t very funny.”
