Cannes at the box office: the Palme d’Or branch that received the most in France is…

The Cannes Film Festival, which was created in 1939, only started in 1946 after the end of World War II. Since then, 76 Palms have been awarded. Among them, ten were given to French films, including Anatomy of the Fall, shot on May 27, 2023. But what are the routes of these works in cinemas? Are they really, as some clichés suggest, elitist films that only appeal to enthusiasts?

In France, 34 Palme d’Or branches have exceeded a million, which is far from insignificant. The most recent success dates back to 2019, in a pre-Covid world, with Bong-Joon Ho’s Parasite, which opened over 1.7 million theaters.

There are four French films in the ranking of the ten most important successes – two of them are co-productions. France’s Marcel Camus’ Orfeu Negro is in seventh place with 3,697,426 receptions. In sixth place is Claude Lelouch’s Un Homme et une femme with 4,269,572 receptions. Louis Malle and Jean-Yves Cousteau’s documentary Le Monde du silence is in fourth place with 4,640,159 viewers.

The mistress of her country, the first branch of the Palme d’Or, who recorded the most landings, is indeed French. It’s a Henri-Georges Clouzot film, The Wages of Fear, with Yves Montand among others, released in 1953. In total, 6,944,665 viewers came to cinemas. It was the fourth biggest box office hit of 1953, behind Disney’s Peter Pan.

Palme d’Or Top 20 at the French Box Office:

1. The wages of fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot: 6,944,665 admissions (1953 Palme d’Or)
2. Carol Reed’s The Third Man: 5,716,243 admissions (1949 Palme d’Or)
3. When the Palms Go Next to Mikhail Kalatozov: 5,414,915 receptions (1958 Palme d’Or)
4. A world of silence By Louis Malle and Jean-Yves Cousteau: 4,640,159 admissions (1956 Palm Branch)
5. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: 4,537,867 admissions (1979 Palme d’Or)
6. man and woman by Claude Lelouch: 4,269,209 admissions (1966 Palm Branch)
7. Orpheus the Negro by Marcel Camus: 3,690,517 admissions (1959 Palme d’Or)
8. Cheetah by Luchino Visconti: 3,649,498 admissions (1963 Palm Branch)
9. Robert Altman’s MASH: 3,647,656 admissions (1970 Palme d’Or)
10. William Wyler’s Law of the Lord: 3,051,784 admissions (Palme d’Or 1957)
11. Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita: 2,934,425 admissions (1960 Palme d’Or)
12. Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction: 2,864,640 admissions (1994 Palm)
13. Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese: 2,697,355 receipts (1976 Palme d’Or)
14. Jane Campion’s Piano Lesson: 2,664,718 admissions (1993 Palm Tree)
15. Roland Joffe’s mission: 2,510,897 landed (1986 Palme d’Or)
16. Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore: 2,369,621 admissions (2004 Palme d’Or)
17. Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders: 2,019,539 admissions (Palm 1984)
18. The Drum by Volker Schlöndorff: 1,959,414 admissions (Palme d’Or 1979)
19. Costa Gavras Missing (reported missing): 1,823,040 landings (Palme d’Or 1982)
20. Roman Polanski’s The Pianist: 1,775,310 admissions (2002 Palme d’Or)