The kings of the Croisette

Six decades of filmic genius and glamour at Cannes beguile Andrew Robinson

You won a prize at Cannes?" were Billy Wilder's opening words to Satyajit Ray when Ray visited him in Hollywood in 1958 on the set of Wilder's Some Like It Ho t. "Well, I guess you're an artist. But I'm not. I'm just a commercial man, and I like it that way."

In fact, there was probably always more commerce than art at the Cannes Film Festival from its launch in 1946 - even in the heyday of art cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Look at the winners of the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or, and there are some extraordinary omissions. No film at all by Bergman, Godard, Ozu, Pontecorvo, Ray, Tarkovsky or Truffaut, and none of the classics by Antonioni, Kurosawa, Polanski or Wajda. Fellini received the award for La Dolce Vita rather than for La Strada . Among the American directors, ironically, the record is slightly more impressive, with Palmes d'Or awarded for Altman's M.A.S.H. , Coppola's The Conversation and Scorsese's Taxi Driver - but no awards for Allen, Huston, Kubrick or Wilder. The overall impression from nearly 60 years of the Palme d'Or is that it falls uncertainly somewhere between the genuinely artistic and the unashamedly commercial, as witness recent winners such as The Piano , Pulp Fiction , The Pianist and Fahrenheit 9/11 .

Of course, there are many other awards at Cannes, for more imaginative, original and sensitive films. These justify the unique position in the film world occupied by the festival, which hardly ever fails to attract even those directors it snubs (though Bergman has stayed away). Over the decades it has undoubtedly helped to promote cinema as an art as well as a business. Cannes awards remain a much-needed antidote to the Oscars. One can but salute Gilles Jacob, the festival's current president, for frankly stating in an interview in this DVD about Cannes: "The Americans are only interested in exporting their films to the world. They're not interested in importing foreign films into America." There is little prospect, he says, of staging a festival such as Cannes in America, even in New York or San Francisco.

Heart of the Festival consists of three short films directed by Jacob himself, using archival footage of the festival shot by companies such as Gaumont and Pathe and television coverage, plus a considerable, highly articulate interview with Jacob. The first film, Cannes Stories , is about celebrity visitors to the festival; the second, The Red Carpet , shows off the ritual of the awards; the third, Words in Progress , gives directors a chance to talk about the festival and their films.

The style is impressionistic, even poetic, throughout, with the emphasis on gossip and glamour in the first two films, including celebrity blunders. Instead of using a narrator, Jacob lets the images speak for themselves, though often only for the blink of an eye, not minding if the viewer is left puzzled and groping for the "pause" button. Each film is offered in two versions: with subtitles translating the interviews, or with subtitles identifying the stars and directors. If you choose the first, you are often left guessing about who you are seeing and listening to, but it is fun to see how many famous faces one can put names to without help.

Together, the films should appeal to everyone from lovers of the luscious young Brigitte Bardot - seen frolicking in time-honoured fashion on the beach - to devotees of a master such as Kurosawa, shown at impressive length moving around the festival with unmistakable dignity. In a delicious moment, Lindsay Anderson upbraids television crews for shining bright lights on his 90-year-old actress Lillian Gish: "Remember, ladies and gentleman, television was made for man, not man for television." But one cannot helping noticing that most of the really great artists who appear are content to remain largely silent about their films. It is the lesser directors such as Allen, Godard and Scorsese who like to do the talking. In the end, Cannes will always be more about the self-promotion of a Michael Moore than the self-knowledge of a Jean Renoir.

Andrew Robinson, literary editor of The Times Higher , is about to publish Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema .