Well, I guess the Cannes Film Festival is over. It's supposed to be a critical point in a film's global distribution, and I'd wanted to tell you about every fantastic new foreign classic that would hit art houses in the next few months. But then I woke up one morning and realized the whole thing was finished and no one had cared about anything besides Angelina Jolie's due date.

They also might have cared about Jury President Sean Penn's almost-divorce for awhile, too, before he took wife Robin Wright-Penn out for a walk to dissuade the nonbelievers. Sean Penn later said, of Palme d'Or winner Laurent Cantet's "The Class," "All of the performances: magic. All of the writing: magic. All of the provocations, and all of the generosity: magic." You know what he forgot to add? "All of this event's paparazzi coverage: magic." Because if it hadn't been for stunt juror pick Natalie Portman, Buttercup and the Jolie-Pitt twins, Cannes would have flown by without notice, like English subtitles after a disengaged movie-goer has accidentally fallen asleep.

I'm not making the argument that Cannes is totally irrelevant, because I don't believe that's the case. I'm just saying that maybe something about the contest has changed, that maybe a festival showing "Kung-Fu Panda" out of competition this year is not necessarily the same festival that showed "8 ½" and "The Birds" out of competition in 1963.

So I asked my dad, a man who's lived through the rise and fall of the art house and a few decades of Cannes, if he could name a winning film from his earlier days.

"I think 'Blow-Up.' For some reason, that one sticks out in my mind."

He's right; Michelangelo Antonioni won the 1967 Grand Prix du Festival, which was the equivalent of the Palme d'Or from 1964 to 1974. The prize was significant enough for my dad to remember, even though it was awarded a few years after the police car sit-in and just before the Summer of Love. Between these two bookends of his culturally-tumultuous college experience is "Blow-Up." Like the festival itself, the film is situated in his memory as a crucial event among crucial events. I wonder if, in 40 years, I'll feel the same way about "The Class." Probably not.

My dad and I sit and consider the history of cinema for a second, and I ask him if he thinks Cannes is the same as it was in its glory days of the Sixties and Seventies.

"It was a much, much bigger deal then than it is now. But maybe that was because I lived in Berkeley and the filmic cognizance was a little higher there."

I tell him that I live in Berkeley now, and it doesn't seem like the filmic cognizance is all that high.

"Yeah, but living in Berkeley was a bigger deal back then, too."

And my dad's right. A lot has changed about Berkeley, just like a lot has changed about the world and, consequently, a lot has changed about Cannes' audience. Though the imported art film was never a draw in the way other movies are – even most critics have to admit that "Last Year at Marienbad," one of the first New Wave hits, was really only popular in New York City – they were probably more of a cultural event at Cannes' peak than they are now. And for this year, Cannes is over.

But if a film festival ends and we only see stars, did any of it really make a sound? Or did it simply make noise?

By the way, Dustin Hoffman says Angelina is due on August 19.

Tags: THINGS OF IMPORT