Claude Lelouch’s 1966 musical romantic melodrama A Man and a Woman starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant is the inspiration behind the official posters for Cannes Film Festival, at its 78th edition.
For the first time in Cannes’ history, the movie, which won the Palme d’Or that year, has spurred two official posters, both showing the film’s iconic embrace scene between Aimée’s Anne and Trintignant’s Jean-Louis on deserted beach: one with Aimee’s face shown and one with Trintignant’s.
The film centered on Anne and Jean-Louis, a widow and a widower who find each other but who must tread carefully as they are haunted by their tragic past loves. After its Palme d’Or triumph, the pic won the Best Foreign Film and Screenplay Oscars, while Aimee (Best Actress) and Lelouch (Best Director) were nominated.
“It was 60 years ago. In 1965, two damaged beings played by Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant met, charmed each other, resisted, and finally twirled under Claude Lelouch’s incandescent camera,” the festival wrote today. “The Palme d’or in Cannes in 1966, the two Oscars in Hollywood in 1967 and the dozens of awards around the world pale in comparison to this grandiose moment of tenderness, simplicity and beauty.”
“During times that separate, compartmentalize or subjugate, the Festival de Cannes wants to (re)unite; to bring bodies, hearts and souls closer together; to encourage freedom and portray movement in order to perpetuate it; to embody the whirlwind of life to celebrate it, again and again.
“This man and this woman who both won awards in Cannes– Best Actor, Best Actress–are no more. These two posters also pay homage. Magnificent heroes of delicacy and seduction, Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant forever illuminate the film of our lives, like these two posters, whose colors express the intensity of a passionate love that triumphs over despair. This light no longer comes from the heavens, today troubled on all sides by dark clouds; it emerges from the radiant fusion of two beings who reconcile us with life.”
This year’s Cannes Film Festival runs May 13-24.
