Palme d’Or winners: Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli in Carol Reed’s Vienna-set thriller The Third Man.
Palme d’Or winners: Cannes Film Festival
1939*: Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille)
1946**:
- Brief Encounter (David Lean)
- Maria Candelaria / Portrait of Maria (Emilio Fernández)
- The Turning Point / Velikiy perelom (Fridrikh Markovitch Ermler)
- La Symphonie Pastorale / Pastoral Symphony (Jean Delannoy)
- The Last Chance / Die Letzte Chance / (Leopold Lindtberg)
- Men Without Wings / Muzi bez krídel (Frantisek Cáp)
- Rome, Open City / Roma, città aperta (Roberto Rossellini)
- Lowly City / Neecha Nagar (Chetan Anand)
- Torment / Hets (Alf Sjöberg)
- The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder)
- The Red Earth / De Røde enge (Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen)
1947**:
- Best Romantic or Psychological Film: Antoine and Antoinette / Antoine et Antoinette (Jacques Becker)
- Best Adventure or Detective Film: The Damned / Les Maudits (René Clément)
- Best Socially Conscious Film: Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk)
- Best Musical Comedy: Ziegfeld Follies (Vincente Minnelli)
- Best Animated Film: Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen for Walt Disney)
- Best Documentary: Floods in Poland (short film by Jerzy Bossak and Waclaw Kazmierczak)
1948†: There was no Cannes Film Festival
1949: The Third Man (Carol Reed)
1950†: There was no Cannes Film Festival
1951: Miracle in Milan / Miracolo a Milano (Vittorio De Sica) and Miss Julie / Fröken Julie (Alf Sjöberg), starring Anita Björk.
1952: Two Cents Worth of Hope / Due soldi di speranza (Renato Castellani) and Othello / The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Orson Welles)
1953: The Wages of Fear / Le Salaire de la peur (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
1954: Gate of Hell / Jigokumon (Teinosuke Kinugasa)
1955: Marty (Delbert Mann)
1956: The Silent World / Le Monde du silence (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle)
1957: Friendly Persuasion (William Wyler)
1958: The Cranes are Flying / Letyat zhuravli (Mikhail Kalatozov)
1959: Black Orpheus / Orfeu Negro (Marcel Camus)
1960: La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini)
1961: The Long Absence / Une aussi longue absence (Henri Colpi) and Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
1962: Keeper of Promises / O Pagador de Promessas (Anselmo Duarte)
1963: The Leopard / Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti)
1964: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg / Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
1965: The Knack …and How to Get It (Richard Lester)
1966: The Birds, the Bees and the Italians / Signore & signori (Pietro Germi) and A Man and a Woman / Un homme et une femme (Claude Lelouch)
1967: Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1968†: Cannes Film Festival interrupted
1969: If…. (Lindsay Anderson)
1970: MASH (Robert Altman)
1971: The Go-Between (Joseph Losey)
1972: The Working Class Goes to Heaven / La Classe operaia va in paradiso (Elio Petri) and The Mattei Affair / Il Caso Mattei (Francesco Rosi)
1973: The Hireling (Alan Bridges) and Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg)
1974: The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola)
1975: Chronicle of the Years of Fire / Chronique des années de braise (Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina)
1976: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
1977: Padre Padrone / My Father My Master (Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani)
1978: The Tree of Wooden Clogs / L’Albero degli Zoccoli (Ermanno Olmi)
1979: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola) and The Tin Drum / Die Blechtrommel (Volker Schlöndorff)
1980: All That Jazz (Bob Fosse) and Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa)
1981: Man of Iron / Czlowiek z zelaza (Andrzej Wajda)
1982: Missing (Costa-Gavras) and Yol (Yilmaz Güney)
1983: The Ballad of Narayama / Narayama Bushiko (Shohei Imamura)
1984: Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
1985: When Father Was Away on Business / Otac na sluzbenom putu (Emir Kusturica)
1986: The Mission (Roland Joffé)
1987: Under the Sun of Satan / Sous le soleil de Satan (Maurice Pialat)
1988: Pelle the Conqueror / Pelle erobreren (Bille August)
1989: Sex, Lies and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
1990: Wild at Heart (David Lynch)
1991: Barton Fink (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
1992: The Best Intentions / Den Goda viljan (Bille August)
1993: Farewell My Concubine / Ba wang bie ji (Chen Kaige) and The Piano (Jane Campion)
1994: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
1995: Underground (Emir Kusturica)
1996: Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh)
1997: Taste of Cherry / Ta’m e guilass (Abbas Kiarostami) and The Eel / Unagi (Shohei Imamura)
1998: Eternity and a Day / Mia aioniotita kai mia mera (Theo Angelopoulos)
1999: Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
2000: Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier)
2001: The Son’s Room / La stanza del figlio (Nanni Moretti)
2002: The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
2003: Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
2004: Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore)
2005: The Child / L’Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
2006: The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
2007: 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days / 4 luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile (Cristian Mungiu)
2008: The Class / Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet)
2009: The White Ribbon / Das weisse Band (Michael Haneke)
2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Loong Boonmee raleuk chat (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2011: The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
2012: Amour (Michael Haneke)
2013: Blue Is the Warmest Color / La vie d’Adèle (Abdellatif Kechiche)
* The 1939 Grand Prix was given retroactively at the 55th Cannes Film Festival ceremony in 2002. The 1939 Cannes festival was cancelled because of World War II.
** There were multiple winners in 1946 and 1947. In ’47, the winners were selected according to particular genres.
† Due to a lack of funds, there was no Cannes Film Festival in 1948 and 1950. The 1968 festival came to a halt because of the student protests that paralyzed France. Thus far, no retroactive awards have been handed out for that particular year, though there’s always hope.
With the exception of 1947, when the awards were not named, prior to 1955 the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize was called the “Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.”
Information on the Cannes Film Festival and Palme d’Or winners: IMDb, and Cari Beauchamp and Henri Béhar’s Hollywood on the Riviera.
Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli The Third Man photo: London Films.