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When the twenty-first Cannes Film Festival came to an abrupt and dramatic end days ahead of schedule, Louis Malle was 35 years old.¹ Highly successful at an early stage of his career, the filmmaker had already won an Academy Award and the festival's own Palme d"Or by the age of 24.² Reflecting on the moment years later, Malle would remember that he "was getting impatient in Cannes, where the festival was proceeding as if nothing was going on elsewhere". A member of the 1968 jury, Malle was "definitely on the side of the students' and had "encourage[d] the jury to resign". After a majority of its members decided to do just that, Malle made the announcement at the Palais du Festival to the sound of boos and applause from the audience. "Of course, I got the blame", Malle would recall, "I was persona non grata in Cannes. The shopkeepers were furious. Word had spread that I was responsible, that I had single-handedly stopped the festival".³ In fact, filmmakers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard had been very outspoken and Malle was not (as some would assume) the president of the jury that year.⁴

DOI: 10.1057/9780230319561_23

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