Latest news with #standingovation
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
So THAT's Why Standing Ovations At Cannes Are So Damn Long
According to The Guardian, the applause following Pillion's screening at this year's Cannes Film Festival 'lasted several minutes, with the inevitable awkwardness of seeming dutiful'. The Alexander Skarsgård film is the norm, not the exception. In 2024, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis reportedly got seven callous-inducing minutes of standing ovation. Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth managed to elicit a record-breaking 22 mins in 2006. And Joachim Trier's 2025 follow-up to The Worst Person In The World rivalled that, with the ovation for his latest film clocking in at almost 20 minutes. GQ has said in the past that, when it comes to applause at Cannes, 'anything five minutes or less is a tepid – or worse – appraisal'. But how did this palm prison get built, and what is its purpose? According to The Atlantic (who, like The Guardian, call the custom 'awkward'), clapping at Cannes is part of the spectacle. At the French festival in particular, the length and enthusiasm of the clapping is seen as a sign of who thinks which film will be the next 'hit'. But the 'pageantry' of standing ovations is fallible at best and unfairly, performatively biased at worst – for what it's worth, Megalopolis was both critically panned and a box office flop. Speaking to The Atlantic, professor Scott Page, who's studied clapping as a form of social behaviour, said: 'There is a real asymmetry to who has influence'. You might be more inclined to partake in a quarter-hour of palm-smashing if someone you really respect and admire is doing so beside you, he suggested. He added that 'if you're not sure' about a film, and 'you think the other people [around you] are smarter than you, then you are going to stand… I imagine Cannes to be a place [where if I ask myself,] 'How confident am I, sitting near movie stars and directors?'' The answer, he says, is likely to be 'not very'. Also, I can't imagine the panic of being the first person to stop applauding, say, a Del Toro film in front of the man himself – peer pressure and etiquette pile up. Speaking to Screen Daily, Barry Hertz, film editor and critic for Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail, says that the length of applause a film got at Cannes can sometimes be seen as an interim star rating system until its release. 'Instead of a film getting four stars, it got a '10-minute standing ovation,'' he says. But though an anonymous film PR told the publication that 'nobody is taking it seriously,' Kent Sanderson, president of indie film distributor Bleecker Street, doesn't think Cannes' applause sessions are going anywhere fast. 'It's a self-perpetuating machine between the festival, the trades and the audiences,' they commented. The more the Cannes audience claps, the more it's noted that they clap, the more expected long clapping sessions become; so, it becomes both a sign of disdain and proof of not being 'in on' the festival's culture not to do so. I'd call it a vicious cycle, but it's literally already a shoulder-aching, barbed, endless round... Harry Potter Star Harry Melling And Alexander Skarsgård's 'Kinky' Biker Romance Causes A Huge Stir In Cannes Halle Berry Forced To Change Her Outfit Because Of This Last-Minute Change To Cannes Dress Code Robert De Niro Kicks Off Cannes Film Festival With Blistering Speech About 'Philistine' Trump
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Film Festival's longest standing ovations in history
If you're ever planning a visit to the Cannes Film Festival, prepare to leave with sore palms. Over the last few decades, Cannes has become famous for lengthy standing ovations. The best films to premiere on the Croisette can have audiences on their feet for well over 15 minutes, which is a frankly absurd use of anybody's time. This practice has only become more popular in recent years, mostly thanks to breathless reporting in the industry trade press. The phrase "10-minute standing ovation at Cannes" has become even more valuable than a string of five-star reviews when trying to promote a festival favourite on its mainstream cinema run. As Cannes 2025 gets underway, we've looked back in time — with the aid of a trusty stopwatch — to look at which movies have had festival audiences on their feet for the longest period of time. Guillermo del Toro's fantastical masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth still stands as the movie with the longest standing ovation in Croisette history. The record has now stood for almost 20 years, recognising the Mexican director's twisted and terrifying journey into the heart of Francoism — which proves to be far more horrifying than any of the mythical beasts visited along the way. Read more: Tom Cruise receives nearly 8-minute standing ovation at Cannes premiere of final Mission: Impossible film (The Independent, 2 min read) The movie went on to win three Oscars in the wake of its Cannes premiere, as well as standing as arguably the greatest film made by one of cinema's true modern maestros. Michael Moore spent most of the early noughties delivering incendiary, political documentaries that broke free of the usual doc crowd to achieve mainstream success. In 2004, he took a big swing at the George W Bush regime with Fahrenheit 9/11 — a searing takedown of the president's policies and the Iraq War. After achieving a rapturous reception at Cannes, the doc won the festival's most prestigious prize when it was awarded the Palme d'Or. When it landed for ordinary audiences, it became the highest-grossing documentary film of all time — later usurped by Michael Jackson's This Is It. Matthew McConaughey had a big Cannes in 2012, starring in two movies that received enormous standing ovations — right at the heart of the period of career success known popularly as the "McConaissance". The other one will appear later on this list, but the one with the most excitement behind it was Jeff Nichols' coming-of-age movie Mud. Read more: Matthew McConaughey grew tired of being 'the rom-com dude' (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read) For 18 minutes, audiences stood to applaud at the end of the film, in which McConaughey plays a fugitive who befriends a pair of teenagers. The trio then try to evade capture. Ultimately, the buzz catapulted this low-budget drama to a box office return three times its production budget. Hot off the success of Ryan Gosling thriller Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn delivered a pair of very divisive movies. The first was Only God Forgives — another collaboration with Gosling — and the second was The Neon Demon, in which Elle Fanning played an aspiring model who discovers real darkness at the heart of the fashion industry. Read more: Elle Fanning's contacts 'burned into her eye' during The Neon Demon shoot (Cover Media, 1 min read) When the movie came out on general release, the reviews were split squarely down the middle and the box office was very disappointing. However, at Cannes, Refn's vision earned 17 minutes of continuous applause from the assembled crowd. For a very long time, the record for Cannes' longest ever standing ovation was held by Sergio Leone's gargantuan crime epic Once Upon a Time in America. As with so many of the films on this list, Leone's movie proved to be controversial when it emerged into the wider world — particularly because of sexual violence that some critics and audiences believed to be gratuitous. The film follows best friends played by Robert De Niro and James Woods as they rise through the world of organised crime in New York City. Nowadays, it regularly appears on lists of the best gangster movies ever made. The second part of Matthew McConaughey's incredibly busy Cannes docket was the 2012 movie The Paperboy, directed by Lee Daniels. It quickly became notorious, largely for a scene in which Nicole Kidman urinates on Zac Efron's character after he is stung by jellyfish. In Cannes, though, any controversy was dwarfed by an enormous standing ovation. Read more: Zac Efron And Nicole Kidman's New Film Once Had A Much More Explicit Title (HuffPost, 2 min read) There has to be an asterisk next to this ovation, though. Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph explained that he was at the screening and referred to the ovation as "a cacophonous quarter-hour of jeering, squawking and mooing". So not quite an unqualified success, it's fair to say. The Dardennes are long-time stalwarts of the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d'Or twice. They got the ovation to match their festival fame in 2014 with Two Days, One Night. Marion Cotillard would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for her performance as a factory worker who has to convince her colleagues to vote to forego a cash bonus so that she can keep her job. It was Cotillard who found herself at the centre of the lavish praise for the film, which still stands as one of the actor's best pieces of work. Capernaum is a fascinating film, using extended flashbacks to tell the story of a 12-year-old boy incarcerated for a violent crime who seeks to sue his parents for giving birth to him. It's a bleak tale led by a tremendous performance from its non-professional lead actor Zain Al Rafeea and it certainly made an impact at Cannes, where the audience rose to its feet for 15 minutes of applause. The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes and then went on to do very well at the box office, still standing as the highest-grossing Arabic movie of all time. It's a tough watch, but one that's worth your time. Alice Rohrwacher makes strange, magical movies. She might never have made one as unusual and beguiling as Happy As Lazzaro, which subtly pulls the audience around in time and tone through the genius of Adriano Tardiolo's quiet, sensitive performance in the title role. Read more: 'La Chimera' Filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher Named 2025 Cannes Camera d'Or Jury President (IndieWire, 2 min read) This is the sort of film that will often thrive in a festival environment, and so it proved at Cannes with a 15-minute ovation. Rohrwacher's relationship with Cannes has since continued with the premiere of her next film La Chimera, and she is serving as the president of the jury for the Caméra d'Or prize for the festival's best first feature. Belle is a strange and over-stuffed movie that is carrying rather too much plot for its own good, but that didn't stop Cannes audiences from falling head over heels in love with it. The film reimagines the story of Beauty and the Beast — it really is a tale as old as time — in a virtual world, where the titular youngster becomes a successful singer within an online landscape. However, there's an undeniable, crowd-pleasing joy to the film that no doubt got the Cannes audience to leap to its feet. At Cannes in 2024, the big winner in terms of audience reaction was not Kevin Costner's epic western movie Horizon — though that did manage around 12 minutes of applause. The most remarkable ovation went to Iranian thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig, in which a judge becomes increasingly paranoid about his own family when his secret gun goes missing against the backdrop of anti-regime protests. Read more: 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' director Mohammad Rasoulof on transforming difficulties into beauty (EuroNews, 10 min read) Seed of the Sacred Fig is a strange and unconventional film that is as remarkable for its behind-the-scenes story as the one in front of the camera. Director Mohammad Rasoulof has repeatedly violated Iran's censorship laws to tell his stories, while his actors were unable to leave Iran to come to the Cannes premiere. The footage, shot in secret, had to be smuggled out of Iran. That's an achievement worthy of any standing ovation.
Washington Post
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The anatomy of Kristen Stewart's awkward, endearing standing ovation at Cannes
CANNES, France — Clocking the length of standing ovations has become something of a competitive sport at the Cannes Film Festival. But what's often lost in announcing who got six minutes and who got eight is the fun of what happens during the standing O. It's perhaps the one moment in our social media-ed, meme-ified world when we can watch celebrities at their most human.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Standing Ovations At Cannes: How We Clock Those Claps, Which Movie Holds The Record & Why The Industry Loves To Hate The Ritual
The Cannes Film Festival means many different things to many different people — from masterpiece movies to not-so-well-regarded ones, from glitz and glamour to sometime controversy. In the latter category, though not as hotly debated as say, the Palme d'Or winner, is the now de rigueur practice of timing standing ovations. What's become a ritual, not only in Cannes but also at the Venice Film Festival, really only caught fire a handful of years ago as reporters, publicists and sales companies see an opportunity for clicks, crowing rights and marketing hooks. There are a lot of skeptics out there with regard to these stories; it's a love/hate relationship: They seem to irk folks while also generating plenty of chatter. More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story Cannes Film Festival 2025 In Photos: Opening Ceremony, 'Leave One Day' Premiere & Palme d'Or Honoree Robert De Niro Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Green & Maria Pedraza To Star In Thriller 'Just Play Dead' - Cannes Market But it's also a chance to marvel at the sheer emotion a movie can elicit, and that's something we here at Deadline celebrate. Among the films that have received the warmest response at the Palais, many went on to great success. Now, there is (to our knowledge) no official record — there is certainly no official method for timing applause — but it's roundly considered that Guillermo del Toro's 2006 fantasy drama Pan's Labyrinth is the granddaddy of them all at 22 minutes. While it didn't win any prizes on the Riviera, it went on to scoop three Oscars and solidify del Toro as a visionary filmmaker. Deadline's history of scrupulously tracking ovations began in earnest just a few years ago — though when I reported on the reaction to Mel Gibson's 2016 comeback, Hacksaw Ridge, in Venice, it signaled there was a desire for this type of coverage. In the intervening time, I was a staunch believer in only timing the 'standing' part of an ovation, though that has evolved and now we time all of the applause. Years ago, filmmakers didn't necessarily speak after a premiere — I recall a turning point in that when Quentin Tarantino debuted Once Upon a Time in Hollywood here. Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux now roundly hands a microphone to a director as he encourages a steadycam operator to zero in on famous faces; this arguably leads to longer applause. But, a note to the skeptics, we do time the applause with a stopwatch — which we pause during speeches and then turn on again once the clapping begins anew. Other long ovations include for Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon at 17 minutes in Cannes 2016 and Michael Moore's eventual Palme d'Or winner, 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11, at 20 minutes. RELATED: Full List Of Cannes Palme d'Or Winners Through The Years: Photo Gallery Not every extended ovation means a movie is primed for a long and fruitful career, or vice versa. In 2019, Joker received an enthusiastic eight-minute reception in Venice. Last year's Joker: Folie à Deux exceeded that with nearly 12½ minutes. The first Joker won the Golden Lion, two Oscars and grossed over $1 billion globally. And, Folie à Deux, well we know how that ended up. Over in Venice, it's thought that Pedro Almodóvar's English-language debut, last year's The Room Next Door, is a Lido record-holder at 18 minutes. While Venice chief Alberto Barbera doesn't regularly proffer a mic, talent sometimes descends from the gallery amid the applause, which can extend an ovation. Almodóvar did that, as did del Toro when he premiered his Golden Lion and Best Picture Oscar winner The Shape of Water during an emotional unveiling in 2017. Speaking of del Toro, Jeanne Berney, who now is COO of Picturehouse, was in the Grand Théâtre Lumière when Pan's Labyrinth premiered and recalls the reaction felt like a 'once-in-a-lifetime experience.' She tells us: 'We knew it was a masterpiece — I mean, we loved it, but it wasn't an easy sell to an audience. When we got into Cannes, it was the closing Saturday night. It was very late in the festival. And it was unusual to go that late, but we felt like we really wanted it to be in Cannes. … A lot of the industry people have left by then, and the room is certainly filled in the front with industry people and friends and agents, but there's also an awful lot of people that are festival-goers and even local people, especially by that last weekend, right? So, the film played really well. … We felt like it was a fantastic screening. 'And then, when the ovation started, everyone just kind of normally stands up and, you know, isn't that great? The cameras are panning across. But then as it just kept going, and Guillermo's warmth in the moment and his reaction as it continued to go on and on. … We just couldn't believe we were still clapping 10 minutes in, 15 minutes in, but nobody wanted to stop, and they were all so gracious. It was before the days when they bring out the microphone and have the director say something. And this was just a purely blissful, wondrous, once-in-a-lifetime experience. … From the rafters to the stage, from the balcony, everyone stood and applauded, and I never witnessed anything like it again.' Best of Deadline TV Show Book Adaptations Arriving In 2025 So Far Book-To-Movie Adaptations Coming Out In 2025 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
