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How Cannes was
founded

Cannes reflections

Croisette and port

Let’s finish this series about Cannes with a general perspective of what Cannes represents today. It is all about excess-excessive posing, excessive indulgence and excessive spending. Cannes has never been a real town at all. The Croisette along the shore with its row of ‘”grande luxe hotels”, was created largely to please the English taste for the Riviera in a more gracious age. Even the beaches are false, sand is imported to cover the pebbles and is duly raked over each morning by minions for the hotel opposite. Each section of the beach is owned by the nearby hotel and the visitor will pay heavily for lunch in the restaurant at the back of the beach, or to hire the parasols and mattresses to have a suntan. Few complain since everyone is on expenses.
Imagine that even the harbour, which looks so authentic, has a suspect air about it. No-one ever sees a “bona-fide” fishing vessel land its catch there. Not surprising when you know that every year, every kind of non-fishing boat from small pleasure-cruisers jam the place to the sort of yacht that Clint Eastwood must be seen in. The harbour becomes a forest of masts and silver rigging. No fishing but posing in Armani and Chanel, designed scuba gear by their owners.
The debarred critics like me can always take refuge in the Rue d’Antibes, the main shopping street, running parallel to the Croisette. Apart of the inordinate number of expensive lingerie shops. But that’s no consolation.
So let’s finish with some more sites to visit eventually. The RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH ST.MICHEL THE ANGEL on 30, boulevard Alexandre III. The growing Russian enclave in Cannes and the come back of empress Maria Alexandrovna in the city, urged the Russians to build a larger church at the end of the 19th century with a richly decorated interior and a few admirable icons. Part of the royal family is buried in the crypt.
LA CROIX DES GARDES is a 164 m high hilltop where you can benefit of a magnificent view on the Lerins islands until the Esterel mountain range.
We must admit anyway that Cannes thanks mainly its prestige to the 19th century villas, in fact small castles, located in La Croix des Gardes, east of the city in an area called “La Californie. “ Those villas built for the large aristocratic and wealthy families who passed their holidays with all their children and servants. The most famous of its inhabitants was Pablo Picasso who bought a villa in 1955 after the death of his wife Olga. Most of these houses are still private and not open for visit. But it is agreeable to make a walk through these quarters, like the Chateau Scott at the avenue Maréchal Juin, a sort of pastiche of a medieval English castle. The villa Rothschild, now a public library, is one of the most beautiful houses of the 19th century. The garden with her fake rocks and grottos are still intact.

Bibliography:

John Pemble, "the Mediterranean Passion, Victorians and Edwardians in the South", (Oxford University Press 1988), Mary Blume, "Cote d'Azur. Inventing the French Riviera" (Thames and Hudson, London 1982), The Twenties, From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, by Edmund Wilson (Cannes 1921)-“ Cannes”, by R. Bailey (Pinguin pocket)-“ Eine Cannes Spaziergang”, by Th.Wolfers (ed. Spinne 1995)-Geschiedenis van het Festival” by Piet de Rooy (Alkm.1998)

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Film Festival

Cannes today