The Classics section of the Panorama of European Film this year screens two French films: La belle et la bête, produced in 1946; and Hiroshima, mon amour, in 1959. Both were restored earlier in 2013. Restoration is the least invasive of several interventions that can be made into older films, such as new inserts, soundtrack alterations or colourisation; it is simply the attempt to preserve and improve the picture and sound quality of a given film while leaving it perfectly intact. Much motion picture heritage was at risk of loss in the 1980s, when film stocks were affected by “vinegar syndrome” and had to be transferred to a secure medium; the main obstacle was cost. But restoration has since proved crucial to the appeal of older films to the audience. Classics that were restored in recent years include Shadi Abdel-Salam's The Night of Counting the Years, transferred to 35mm stock in 2009 by Martin Scorsese's company and premiered at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis — which went through many stages, the latest of which was its screening on large screens in Berlin and Frankfurt in 2010 — as well as Georges Méliès's very early colour film Voyage dans la Lune, a short film made in 1902. La Belle et la bête, an adaptation of Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's 1757 fairy tale of the same name, is Jean Cocteau's enduring contribution to the medium. It involves typical French landscapes with traditional costumes, capturing the innocence of fantasy with none of the high-wired, special effect-laden sensory overload of present-day cinema. Belle's father picks a rose not knowing it is from the Beast's garden, he is about to be killed when — by whispering to the Beast's horse and instantly being transported to him — Belle saves her father. The Beast keeps her prisoner, where she is served and pampered by magic rather than any servants, proposing to her every night. Belle accepts the Beast and, trusting her enough to hand her the key to his magic fortune (located in the palace gardens), he lets her leave him for a week to see her dying father. Her rejected bridegroom manages to steal the key and raid the palace, but on finding the site of the magic he turns into a beast — and the Beast becomes Belle's handsome groom; they fly away together. The difference between Cocteau's version and Disney's 1991 Beauty and the Beast is astonishing, and sheds immense light on the history of audiovisual storytelling and how priorities have developed. Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, mon amour, starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada, is a New Wave precursor and an example of the political film that marked the director's early career. The film was screened outside the official competition at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival due to American pressure. It opens with a brilliant scene in which the naked skin of two people is moulded by the light into what looks like the effect of the atom bomb. A dialogue between two lovers, stiff in tone, makes for an interesting discussion of love and war. She is a French actress in Japan, he a Japanese architect. While making an anti-war film in Hiroshima, she has a two-day affair with him. For some 10 minutes at the start of the film they are in an embrace but the viewer cannot see their faces; their conversation is superimposed on horrific footage of the effects of the bomb. Thus binding love and war, the two lovers remain nameless. As it happens they both turn out to be happily married; during their extra night together, which he insists on, she tells him about her love for a German soldier during World War II, in Nevers; he was killed before her eyes. The architect is falling in love with the actress, but the actress resists falling in love with him because it would be a betrayal to that German. The acting is intense, the pace fast, but Rive's voice is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole film. So much so that her phrases prove haunting: “You are destroying me, you are too good to me”; ‘This city was made for love”...
