report date: May 16, 2001

By JOHN HARKNESS

HOOKEY It says something about the mindset this place creates that you feel like playing hookey and skipping the 7 pm Competition press screening. Even if it's a film directed by Alexander Sokhurov - whose films you hate with a passion - and even if one's big escape is heading up to the Salle Bunuel for Martin Scorsese's four-hour documentary on Italian cinema.

I was hoping for something on the order of Scorsese's Personal Journey Through American Movies, the astonishing epic he compiled for the British Film Institute in 1995. Those who've seen the earlier film will recall that Scorsese begins with Allen Dwan's undervalued western, Silver Lode - that's a total film-buff choice and one that almost no one would dare take as a starting point. Il Mio Viaggio In Italia begins with Rossellini's classic Open City and spends almost a whole hour on neo-realism, particularly on Open City and Paisan, before moving on to later Rossellini (without, I believe, Scorsese ever mentioning that he was, for a time, married to Rossellini's daughter).

Open City is an admirable and completely understandable starting point for a meditation on Italian cinema, but Scorsese's footing in Italian cinema isn't nearly as sure as his footing in American cinema, and he doesn't make the kind of associative leaps between films and genres that he manages in his American survey. It's almost a film for people who know nothing about the history of Italian cinema, which the American survey was not.

IT'S NOT JUST ME - Selected quotes from a front-page article in today's Moving Pictures International:

"The most boring competition in 15 years. There isn't one film here that everybody is ecstatic about." - Hamish McAlpine, English distributor

"There are certainly a lot of bad films here this year." Tom Bernard, Sony Pictures Classics

"This year's competition distinguished itself by having nothing to offer. We are all looking for something completely fresh to happen, instead of a selection of old men's experiments." Poul Erik Lindberg, Angel Films

PRIZES - At this point, nobody knows, though Isabelle Huppert seems a lock for her performance in Michael Haneke's emotionally harrowing The Pianist. There's a critical swell for Rivette's Va Savoir and some talk of Jack Nicholson picking up best actor for The Pledge - personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see The Pledge win one of the major prizes. Sean Penn is held in considerable esteem in Europe and won the Best Actor prize a few years ago, an honour he claimed to hold in higher regard than his Oscar nominations. Also, Nanni Moretti's My Son's Room tended to either drive people from the theatre or reduce them to tears, and that kind of emotional response can't but help in a competition notably short on emotional response. Early word of mouth was very strong for the Bosnian No Man's Land, but I've not heard anyone mention it lately. Which, of course, doesn't mean anything.

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today's report