Apartment Cote d'Azur

In 1938, Philippe Erlanger, the Popular Front's minister of tourism, was given the task of finding a suitable venue far a festival to rival Mussolini's new Venice film festival: the French were not about to let the Fascists have all the starlets to themselves. Erlanger went down to the Cote d'Azur, where his Villefranche friends, especially Jean Cocteau, took a dose interest in his mission. Erlanger had a weakness for Cannes, but it lacked hotels, and he was about to choose Biarritz instead when Cocteau intervened and insisted on Cannes: it would be more fun, he said.<br />
The first festival, slated to start 1 August 1939, was cancelled owing to a party pooper named Hitler, spoiling a huge cardboard model of Notre Dame erected on the beach and forcing a liner full of movie stars sent over by MCM to sail home unrequited.The second festival, in 1946,drew some 50 journalists who hobnobbed and drank complimentary rose wine.The jury gaveevery film a prize, which set the tone from the start: the competition bit was only an excuse for a week of carousing and hanky panky; the real festival would always be outside the screenings. Cannes' historians cite 1954 as the year when everything coalesced, when the essential ingredients of sex and scandal were added to the glamour of film: the decolletage of newcomer Sophia Loren made a big impression, grabbing attention and headlines away from Cina Lollobrigida. Another well-endowed starlet (English this time) named Simone Silva went on to the lles de Lerins for a photo session with Robert Mitchum and removed her brassiere.Two hours later she was told to leave Cannes and a few years later, no longer able to find work because of her precocious gesture, she committed suicide. Cannes should have made her an honorary citizen.Twoyears later,the new sensation was Brigitte Bardot, who coyly spun her skirts around to reveal her dainty petites culottes. The atmosphere was so ripe that even the straightest of arrows, Gary Cooper and Esther Williams, had flings during the festival