All Calm at Cannes My friend Bernard Levin has been
lolling in Cannes, whence he sent me this reassuring message: 'The US Sixth Fleet is anchored in the bay opposite the Carlton Hotel, and a good proportion of the crew is anchored to the bars up and down the Croisette. Fortunately, it looks as if the ships will not have to open fire: the Fifteenth Cannes Film Festival (or whatever that thing going on down the road is) seems short on the usual international rows. Germans aren't !a- suiting Italians, Spaniards aren't cutting Poles dead, Russians aren't threatening to walk out, and the French are getting quietly on with the job of overcharging for the drinks. In fact, in- cidents of any sort are few. Nadia Gray has arrived, and the Dolce Vita photographers have swung into action, but she is clearly not going to oblige by taking her clothes off. I early an- nounced my intention of not setting foot inside the cinema throughout the Festival, and am re- garded as a kind of harmless lunatic; though when the disputants return to the table whence I have not stirred, and all agree that the him they have just seen was lousy, I think my pri- vate thoughts. It seems, by the way, to be Japanese year: delicious Madame Butterflies pitterpat modestly about wherever you look, their fans borne on both before and behind them. The British are represented by the New Wave (or whatever that thing is now receding into the middle distance): Miss Tushingham and Mr. Richardson passed through, and the French critics elaborately missed the point of Un Gout de Miel ("histoire homosexuelle"). At the tables, they say Mike Frankovitch won £29,000 last night (I broke even, myself); Wolf Mankowitz, though he does not play, graciously bestows the patronage of his presence on the salle puGlidru Nat Cohen nonchalantly bids it up at the big boys' table, but as there appears to be plenty more where that come from, it does not seem as if he will have to hock the Arts Theatre just yet. Incidentally, is it not charming that the only kosher restaurant in Cannes is called the Windsor? It has just stopped raining.'
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