NEWS MAKER: Michael Moore

Why Moore is more

Have three years really passed since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11? I saw its first screening in Cannes and found the director lurking outside the cinema, trying to gauge audience reaction.

Harvey Weinstein, the US movie moghul, was also mingling with members of the audience. This was significant because there had been suggestions that his studio, Miramax, would refuse to distribute so unpatriotic a product. No doubt, there was pressure on Weinstein from friends of President Bush to pull the plug. However, Weinstein immediately recognised that here was a product that was going to bring him a fistful of dollars.

I went a little over the top in predicting that if any documentary had the potential to topple a president, then perhaps this was it.

As we know, that didn’t happen. Bush went on convincingly to win a second term but, in the long run, Fahrenheit 9/11 helped to erode the president’s credibility, not only in the eyes of Moore’s fellow Americans, but also ordinary citizens everywhere.

There was anger from the pro-Bush lobby when Moore was awarded the Palme d’Or.

They saw it as a reward from the French not so much for Moore’s movie-making skills but for his anti-Americanism. Actually, Moore wasn’t being anti-American, just anti-Bush, not quite the same thing.

Now, the big troublemaker is back in Cannes with vengeance.

His new documentary, Sicko, which is being shown out of competition (on May 19), “sets out to investigate the American health care system”.

According to the festival’s official programme, “Sicko promises to be every bit as indicting as Moore’s previous films”.

He won an Oscar for his 2002 documentary, Bowling for Columbine, about the need for gun control in the US.

Before leaving for Cannes, Moore gave an interview in New York to The Hollywood Reporter in which he was asked about the Treasury investigating him for illegally taking a group of ailing Ground Zero workers to Cuba.

Moore’s response was caustic: “Were they just sitting around there and somebody said, ‘Hey, this is opening in Cannes next week. We have to do something.’?”

Actually, it says a lot for America that Moore is allowed to peddle what administration officials must consider his peculiar brand of poison and that he has not — so far — been found dead in a ditch after being force fed hamburgers.

At Cannes everyone has been rubbing hands in gleeful anticipation.

Brits are back

Stephen Frears, 65, the president of the Cannes jury this year, is the first Briton to be so honoured since Dirk Bogarde in 1984. After his worldwide success with The Queen, which won Helen Mirren an Oscar, the film’s director is the flavour of the month.

In 1997, Frears made a documentary, A Personal History of the British Cinema, which he wanted to call, Bollocks to Truffaut.

“But Channel 4 wouldn’t allow me to,” he recalls.

Truffaut put the knife in by alleging there was “a certain incompatibility between the terms, ‘cinema’ and ‘Britain’ ”.

Today, Frears can afford to take a lofty view: “I think Truffaut’s comment would seem entirely inappropriate now.”

The Queen sold a million tickets in France alone.

Indians in the UK marked Frears’s card way back in 1985 when he directed My Beautiful Laundrette and featured the first Asian in a gay sex scene. The film also depicted the first on-screen Bengali nipple, courtesy Calcutta girl Rita Wolf.

Missing in action

NEW ROLE: Ranjan Mathai opens the Indian pavilion

When Ranjan Mathai, India’s deputy High Commissioner in London went missing a few weeks ago, some of us were tempted to send out a search party. This is because he had not been in his seat for very long.

We need not have worried. In Cannes, when Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, I&B minister, failed to turn up to open the Indian pavilion, we were told “Ranjan Mathai, Indian ambassador in Paris”, would be called up as replacement. Happily, this turned out to be the self-same Ranjan Mathai from London.

Was Indian cinema a weapon in his armoury, a journalist asked.

Mathai gave what I thought was a thoughtful reply: “I have been in Paris for a little over three months. France is extraordinary in that the cultural side of your armoury has weight and strength. We have had a magnificent exhibition of Gupta sculptures. The turnout was so good they were wondering whether they could get it extended.”

And he added: “We were the country of honour at the book fair in March. In France in particular, culture — and films are one of the most important elements of modern cultural expression in India today — is very much a part of the diplomatic armoury.”

French cultural sensitivities have prevented an Indian film from being selected for competition at Cannes — though this is preferable to having a really bad Indian movie being thrown into the fray.

Ritwik’s return

The festival authorities had wanted a retrospective on Ritwik Ghatak’s films but were forced to postpone the venture.

“You remember Sharmila Tagore inaugurated a special screening of Pather Panchali,” said a source.

She added: “They wanted to do a similar retrospective on Ritwik Ghatak but could not find good prints. They will have it next year.”

Indo-French Sangam

HOLDING COURT: Prakash Hinduja (centre) on the Croisette

Geneva-based Prakash Parmanand (PP) Hinduja, the third of the Hinduja brothers, took the chair in Cannes in the absence of his elder brothers, Srichand and Gopi.

To be fair, the Hindujas have been in the film game for over half a century and fondly remember their close relationship with Raj Kapoor.

Holding court on the Croisette one day last week, PP said that the £100,000 paid in the 1960s for the overseas rights of Sangam was four times the previous record.

“In the history of the film industry, never had such a high price been paid,” said PP. “People came to my father and complained, ‘They will make you bankrupt, keep a control on your children.’ Do you know what my father said? ‘I trust my sons’.”

The investment triggered change: “Sangam was a step in entering the overseas market — it was in Cannes in the market. We started our film financing business from the name of the movie. With Guide, Suraj and Ramanand Sagar’s Arzoo, we had 12 pictures. But it was Satyajit Ray’s movies which were very door opening at Cannes.”

DOWN TO A T: Darjeeling lingerie

Undercover agent

Darjeeling, I used to think, stood for tea but after Cannes, I know better. It is the name of a shop specialising in sexy lingerie in Rue d’Antibes, the resort’s main shopping street.

But why “Darjeeling”?

Apparently such alluring apparel takes both wearer and observer to “Himalayan heights of ecstasy”.

Tittle tattle

Incidentally, it was vaguely embarrassing that invitations to this year’s big India party on the Hotel Majestic Beach, at which Giles Jacob, president of the Cannes Film Festival, was guest of honour, had already been sent out with the absent Priya Ranjan Das Munshi as host. If I were Jacob, I might take it as a snub, especially amid so much talk of 60th year “synergy”.

It is always a matter of regret when Indian hosts fail to show up at their own parties.