Five Notable Palm D'Or Winners in Cannes Film Festival History

Since it began bestowing its awards on outstanding films in 1939, the Jury of the Cannes Film Festival has recognized many outstanding film achievements--so many, in fact, that it can seem a daunting task to select a mere handful of them as being "best", let alone rank them according to quality.

Instead, I've selected five notable films which have won the Palm D'Or, the highest prize awarded at the Festival, and ranked these works according to year of release, thus preserving their equality of excellence.

They are a diverse lot, but representative of various styles of filmaking, from the ordinary to the experimental, and this list may yield an overlooked gem or two to keep in mind when you're looking to watch a quality film:

1)The Third Man (1949), directed by Sir Carol Reed. A Graham Greene story about an American (Joseph Cotten), searching for an old friend in post-WWII Vienna, and discovering the friend (Orson Welles) is a notorious war criminal. The film works on multiple levels--as mystery, as history, and as human drama--and Reed keeps the performances sharp and the action moving without a wasted frame. And, Welles' brief but unforgettable performance as Harry Lime is a must-see for any aspiring actor--a distillation of brilliant screen-acting technique.

2)Othello (1952), directed by Orson Welles. The larger-than-life Welles was born to play the Moor, and this he does--in spite of having no studio, no sound equipment, and no budget! Instead, Welles constructed this film shot by shot over the course of several years, whenever he managed to scrape together a few dollars, round up the long-suffering members of his cast and crew, and film a minute or two of action, dubbing in the sound later. The result, however, is seamless--masterful in its mood and atmosphere, and studded throughout with the pictoral gems that are the hallmark of Welles' style (witness the villainous Iago being borne aloft in a basket like an animal after his capture, a stunning image not in the Shakespeare play and that is all Welles' own). It is indeed a miracle that Welles pulled this fantastic scheme off--and that the result is better than anything a high budget and the support of a studio could have produced.

3)Friendly Persuasion (1957), directed by William Wyler. Perhaps a curious choice, as it's seemingly a routine studio product, a comedy-drama about an Indiana Quaker family during the Civil War. However, this lovingly handcrafted film evokes time, place and character with a simplicity that rings of truth, bringing the family memoir of author Jessamyn West to vibrant life. An especially masterful touch is the off-type casting of action star Gary Cooper as the Quaker father; Cooper's comic charm blends with his usual hesitant-hero persona to create a strong yet playful character that's a joy to behold.

4)Black Orpheus (1959), directed by Marcel Camus. Perhaps, with the exception of Welles' film, the most sensually gratifying film ever to receive the award, if not the most stunningly original in concept: a retelling of the Greek romantic legend of Orpheus, with a black cast, and set at the Carnivale in Rio. Like a master painter, Camus uses film as a canvas to transform image, motion, and music into haunting archetypal forms, creating a film awash in a stunningly lush beauty from beginning to end.

5)Apocalypse Now (1979), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Seek out the director's cut of Coppola's reinterpretation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," to see this film as the director intended. A Vietnam War Army captain (Martin Sheen)is sent to assasinate a rogue officer (Marlon Brando) who has set himself up as a ruler of a local tribe--but this journey is just a framework for the eviscerally realistic and haunting images of war that Coppola evokes along the way. One testimony to Coppola's skill is that the actors don't appear to be 'acting' in a 'film' at all; they're real people, experiencing the reality of what is happening on screen (Sheen, in fact, was so physically drained by his performance that he suffered a heart attack on set). Coppola appears to be moving his cameras through an actual war zone, not in a distant newsreel fashion, but as a documentarian, focusing on the individual and thus on the effects of war on the human psyche. So, don't expect action/entertainment here: it is difficult and draining to stay with this film, to in effect take this dark journey along with the characters and to experience their emotions, but the result is to reach a deeper understanding both of the tragedy of war and the complexity of the human condition.