The Modem Operandi From Cannes

CANNES, France — Get a half-dozen of the world’s English-speaking film critics together at Cannes and what are they saying?

“I hold mine over my head. If you put your body between the phone and the source of power, it works every time.”

“I understand the Canadians got theirs to work . . . again. Straight to Toronto. They plug directly into their hotel room wall current. They say they get enough of a boost to get over that tick in the French phone system.”

“(New York Times critic Vincent) Canby said he finally got through last night. Of course, his people trained him for a day and a half; he could practically teach CIA operatives by now--he takes the mouthpiece off the phone and puts two little clippy things on the wires, and he’s in business. Of course he’s filing through Paris. “

“I’d be afraid of blowing up all of Cannes that way.” Pause. “On the other hand. . . . “

They are talking about their computers, their modems, their perilous links to the outside world. And the slim chances of ever seeing them functioning here in France.

Wilder than the wildest fabrications of publicists are the old wives’ tales you can hear whenever knots of journalists gather in Cannes sidewalk restaurants to brag about or agonize over their modems. One of Variety’s legions of writers here murmurred confidently about their set-up through a private European communications network into the U.S. phone system. “We can transmit straight to Hollywood and get a signal on our machines within five minutes that the story’s arrived safely.”

Some writers simply lie--one-upmanship is no small part of the game. They talk about a clear carrier tone from Nepal or wherever, but when you pass their rooms you can hear them, dictating their copy to automatic transcription machines, forced like the rest of us benighted wretches to reply on pre-computer methods.

Actually, I’ve become quite fond of the French phone system. It’s superb at reaching the outside world. It’s marvelously automated; they even sell a 40-franc credit-card-like gadget with a microchip that keeps track of the phone units used and saves searching through pockets and purses for coins. It’s only unfortunate that the French telephone system emits a metered beep every few seconds that wreaks havoc with computer connections.

But put aside machines for a moment. Assume the impossible: that we all had perfect contact with our home bases. We’d still all be in trouble.

Communication, something the French pride themselves on, reaches its nadir at Cannes. There is something intrinsically perverse about gathering the largest number of people with an interest in cinema and a painstaking assemblage of films from across the world--and then making it as difficult as possible to learn when, where and in what language those films are playing.

Oh, there are guides. Chunky, 3- and 4-pound collections of Official Rules and Official Selections. They don’t tell you, however, what plays the next day. For that you get a single printed sheet, slipped into your official festival mailbox one day before. Or perhaps not. With almost 2,000 boxes to see to, delivery can get spotty. Especially if your box is at the end of the delivery route. . . .

All these films, all these screenings, all these medieval methods of learning about them.

Fortunately, Cannes breeds a desperate solidarity among its English-language newspaper people. You pass around precious scraps of information: the fact that “Hotel Terminus,” Marcel Ophuls’ 4-hour, 27-minute film about Klaus Barbie, will be shown at a distant location with English subtitles.

But the French will still have the last word and the upper hand. At the press conference with Ophuls, the crucial question, “Does anyone here need an English translation?,” was, indeed, asked. In French.