A Hard Day's '68 Comeback Special

David Cairns presses on in our unearthing the treasures of the buried 1968 Cannes Film Festival today with Peter Collinson's Long Day's Dying. This is one of my favourites of the fest (as David points out, dig that stone cold Hemmings performance) and what encouraged my digging deeper into the events of 68, which eventually lead to my putting the whole damn thing (minus two MIA's) into the Totally Illegal Film Festival last winter. This film had the biggest impact of anything we screened. The chatty, opinionated jurors were stunned into silence by its artistic coups. Peter Collinson, whose work I've been trying to see more of, has the surest of hands with his material and his New Wavey editing is unforgettable, hammering home the horrors of war with a few seconds of awful spliced into the already tense proceedings. If the fellas at Totally Illegal were any indication, I could see The Long Day's Dying walking off with the jury prize handily. As for the palm d'Or...who knows? The '68 Comeback Special is still young after all.