War And Murder In Cannes
The Cannes Film Festival opened Wednesday on the French Riviera, and new movies and their stars are competing for prizes that can mean big bucks in movie deals, reports CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier.
The red carpet is in place and the stars are out, including Gerard Depardieu and Uma Thurman, who were among the first to arrive. A screening of their movie, Vatel, opened the festival. It is a lavish tale of gluttony and 17th century French royalty.
Vatel isn't up for any awards. But its stars got the honor of opening the show.
The likes of Kristin Scott Thomas and Jeremy Irons are judging 23 films that are vying for the festival's top award, the Golden Palm.
Crowd favorite George Clooney is starring with John Turturro, John Goodman, and Holly Hunter in the latest Coen Brothers venture, O Brother, Where Art Thou?
After the opening-night festivities, the Cannes Film Festival got down to business Thursday with screenings of a French murder movie and a work by the youngest director ever to show a film in competition there.
In 20-year-old Samira Makhmalbaf's Blackboards, teachers wander through Iranian Kurdistan, near the Iraqi border, seeking pupils to educate, and struggling in the face of apathy.
Most of the characters are played by local villagers, who guided the film crew across the terrain to avoid land mines.
Harry, He's Here to Help, a film directed by Dominik Moll of Germany and set in France, is a creepy but funny thriller about excessive love gone awry.
Michel, Claire and their three cranky daughters are on vacation. In the bathroom of a roadside restaurant, Michel meets Harry, a friend from high school he has not seen in years.
As the days go by, Harry is troubled that Michel is overwhelmed by the tasks of daily life and decides to help him. Since he is a psychopath, he does it first by going on a murder spree -- starting with Michel's overbearing parents.
Moll said he was influenced by cinema great Alfred Hitchcock and "the suggestion of violence. In Psycho, you never see the knife plunge into the body of the woman in the shower.''
In his own film, there is very little blood and gore. The actual killing is suggested, rather than shown.