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Venice gives Hollywood a perfect Oscar launch pad

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 September 2005, 07:49 CDT

By Mike Collett-White

VENICE (Reuters) - The Venice Film Festival is the perfect launch pad for an Oscar bid. It gives directors and actors art-house kudos and is the ideal place to promote a movie outside the United States. No wonder Hollywood loves the Lido.

Once again, some of cinema's biggest stars graced the red carpet in Venice, putting the lagoon city almost on a par with the world's premier cinema competition in Cannes in terms of glitz and glamour.

George Clooney, Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Matt Damon and Monica Bellucci sat through gruelling rounds of four-minute interviews to get their soundbites out, and only a plane scare kept Gwyneth Paltrow away.

"This is the first salvo for the Oscars," said Screen International film critic Lee Marshall.

"People are looking for good reviews and upbeat reaction to their films, which helps in the slow build toward the Golden Globes and then the Oscars," he told Reuters on the Lido.

Berlin's film festival, held in February, is too close to the Academy Awards which take place in February or March, while Cannes, held in May, is considered to be slightly too early.

According to Marshall, among the contenders for this year's big prizes at the Oscars are likely to be Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" and George Clooney's "Good Night. And Good Luck," both of which premiered in Venice.

Some directors also see Europe in general and Venice in particular as the best place to launch smaller, independent films that tend to be more thought-provoking and demanding than classic blockbusters.

"We feel in many cases we're going to get a better response to some of our movies in Europe, or outside of the United States, than in the United States," said Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, who often collaborates with Clooney.

"That's just a fact that's been proven in some of the films that we've made," he told Reuters in an interview.

Soderbergh brought "Bubble" to Venice this year, a minuscule-budget film using non-professional actors in a murder story set in a grim mid-American town.

AUDIENCE DIFFERENCES

Asked to explain the difference between American and European audiences, he said:

"They (Europeans) are much more likely to change the shape of their thinking to fit the art they're watching instead of trying to cut the art down to fit the shape of their thinking."

Two other independent U.S. productions were in competition, both with serious themes.

"Brokeback" stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as young cowboys who fall in love in the 1960s, while "Good Night" is Clooney's tale of broadcasting courage during the McCarthy-era witch hunts of the 1950s.

In all, festival director Marco Muller attracted an impressive nine U.S. premieres to his festival this year, in and out of competition.

"I can give you a long list of examples of the role Venice can play in enhancing the visibility of directors and confirming their importance," he told Reuters.

Commercial interests are as important as artistic ones, however, and with box office returns outside the United States becoming increasingly important to Hollywood films, Venice is a convenient venue to showcase them, experts say.

"International box office really used to be the icing on the cake. Now it is often the cake itself," said Marshall.

Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm," starring Matt Damon and Ledger and costing an estimated $90 million to produce, was included in competition this year after it was critically slated in the United States.

Ron Howard's "Cinderella Man," which disappointed in U.S. theatres, got vital European exposure by being shown out-of-competition on the Lido.

"America wasn't as good as it was hoped, but the focus of this country is a little inexact at the moment," was Crowe's explanation for the film's poor U.S. performance.

The luck of timing plays an important part in who turns up at which festival, but Venice is considered more relaxed than Cannes, which is also a huge market for films, and has the romantic lure of the city to attract A-listers to its shores.

Source: REUTERS

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