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Prestige and glamour at Cannes

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CANNES, France (CNN) -- We've come to the south of France to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Cannes -- the most famous film festival of them all.

It's prestigious yet pretentious, brash but beautiful.

In typically French style, Cannes has built its success on a blend of distinctive ingredients -- prestige, pizzazz and the paparazzi!

Cannes has history. The name conjures up images of Bardot on the beach, red carpet moments with Sofia Loren, Catherine Deneuve, Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor and the leading men of the moment through the 50's, 60's and onwards to the present day.

For many years, the Swiss jeweler Chopard has been providing that extra sparkle to catch the flash of the paparazzi and the company has created a special collection to mark the 60th Anniversary.

But there's an even more important role at Cannes which Chopard has made its own: the making of the coveted Palme D'Or, the top prize at Cannes Film Festival. Past winners include Scorsese and Soderbergh, Coppola and Campion, Mike Leigh and, last year, Ken Loach.

Opening the competition this year was "My Blueberry Nights," a first English language movie for Chinese director Wong Kar Wai featuring jazz singer Norah Jones on a road trip on which she encounters an all-star cast including Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and Jude Law.

Also in the competition is British director Michael Winterbottom's "A Mighty Heart," based on the book by Mariane Pearl, widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed while researching terrorist networks in Pakistan in 2002.

Other runners include Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof," Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park" and Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men."

And amid the hectic pace of Cannes, to celebrate the festival's 60th birthday, 35 of the world's top directors from five continents and 25 countries have contributed films lasting just three minutes on the subject of cinema.

Directors including Wim Wenders, the Coen brothers, David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski and Lars Von Trier took part.

Some come to Cannes to show their films, others to see them and yet others come simply to be seen.

The critics here can be savage, the media complains about the constant queues and everyone objects to the price of everything. Some of the publicists are vowing to boycott the event next year -- but for many movie-makers, success at Cannes remains the pinnacle of their dreams.

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