All of a Sudden, the Glories of Cannes Are Upon Us

In its first week, the seventy-ninth edition of the festival unveiled standout new works by James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. Attend the Cannes Film Festival long enough, and you will grow wearily accustomed to the reality that some of the best films to première there are routinely overlooked for prizes. Lee Chang-dong magnificently unsettling psychological chiller, "Burning," failed to ignite the excitement of the 2018 jury. The tragicomic glories of Maren Ade's " Toni Erdmann," from 2016, were just as inexplicably unrewarded. Jurors shut out David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," in 2005; Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Flowers of Shanghai," in 1998; Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Three Colors: Red," in 1994; Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," in 1975; and--the tradition goes way back--Vittorio De Sica's "Umberto D.," in 1952.