La Dolce Vita, The Square, Pulp Fiction... The 10 best Palme d'Or winners of all time according to Le Figaro

Who will succeed Sean Baker's Anora , who won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival? Wes Anderson for The Phoenician Scheme ? Ari Aster for Eddington ? The Dardenne brothers with Young Mothers ? While we wait to find out at the ^78th edition of the unmissable cinematic event on the Croisette, which takes place from May 13 to 24, discover our selection of the ten best Palme d'Or winners.

The wanderings of a society columnist in decadent, nocturnal Rome. Mastroianni drags his spleen along the Via Veneto, to parties and nightclubs. Fellini coined the term "paparazzi" and produced a string of epic sequences (a statue of Christ hanging from a helicopter, Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain, a party in a castle ending in suicide, the enormous sunfish on the beach in the early morning). Sorrentino paid a vibrant homage to the film with La grande bellezza.

Both widowed, Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant meet in Deauville. Directed by a 28-year-old Lelouch , the film has become a classic, combining virtuosity and naturalness. The present in black and white, the past in color (as in Bonjour tristesse ), the Ford Mustang n°184, the stage, the Monte Carlo rally, a telegram, the platform of the Saint-Lazare train station, unforgettable lines (" Do you have rooms? "), the famous chabadabada, we never tire of it.

The students of a British public school (despite the name, there's nothing less public than these establishments) revolt against the discipline imposed on them. The film revealed, at the head of the rebels, the very young Malcolm McDowell, with his sinister insolence: Stanley Kubrick spotted him and hired him to play Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Sanctus , the soundtrack, was a success in record stores. The final scene where the boarders climb onto the roofs and machine-gun their teachers has remained in the memory.

There was a lot of suspense that year on the Croisette. Who would win the ultimate prize: Visconti and his Death in Venice or Losey with this evocation of a Norfolk summer at the very beginning of the 20th century? Set to the music of Michel Legrand, a boy serves as a messenger to the young lady of the house who is having an affair with the neighboring farmer. He will never recover, convinced now that " the past is a foreign land ." The Julie Christie-Alan Bates couple produces sparks of sensuality.

A former Marine turned New York taxi driver decides to save a young prostitute. Jodie Foster walking the sidewalks in a miniskirt, De Niro in one of his most explosive performances with his Mohawk haircut, Harvey Keitel as a truly shady pimp, Cybill Shepherd disoriented in a porn movie, cult phrases (" You're talkin to me?" ), the last score by composer Bernard Herrmann, Scorsese earned his stripes as a great filmmaker. No one has yet taken them away from him.

Superlatives are lacking to describe this crazy and gigantic work by Copolla, who could get away with anything after the triumph of The Godfather . Vietnam as if we were there. We would have to mention everything, the helicopters flying to the sound of " The Valkyrie ", Robert Duvall surfing the waves in the middle of the fighting, the Playmates in the middle of the jungle, Marlon Brando enormous and demonic. Françoise Sagan, president of the jury, created a kind of scandal because she would have preferred to see The Tin Drum by Volker Schlöndorff crowned. Yet there was no contest.

After Reservoir Dogs , Tarantino's second film breaks the bank with this swarm of gangsters operating in Los Angeles. We don't know what to remember the most, between the exchange about Big Macs, John Travolta's dancing (who is given a renaissance here) and Uma Thurman, the cafeteria robbery or Bruce Willis's rape in a basement, Christopher Walken talking about a gold watch. Tubs of hemoglobin, a soundtrack with all the right touches (all rock hits), staccato dialogue, all this really pleased President Clint Eastwood who threw all his weight behind this technicolor comic book success.

Strange incidents occur in a German village before the First World War. A doctor falls from his horse. Children are kidnapped. The pastor is uncompromising with his flock and offspring. Haneke, in impeccable black and white, shows with implacable finesse the rise of what would become Nazism. Evil has the innocent smile of blond children. Even those put off by Funny Games and The Pianist were left confounded by this feature film, which rivals the best of Bergman. Some even went so far as to suggest that this was a new Gary-Ajar affair, convinced that the Austrian had hired a stunt double to get behind the camera. Ah, Cannes and its rumors...

The shock. One morning, beauty shone on the screen of the Lumière auditorium. Suddenly, the audience was convinced they were looking at a masterpiece. It had everything: the origins of the world, the brutality of a father, grief, an omnipresent nature filmed as if it were a love song. We were introduced to a redheaded actress named Jessica Chastain. She held her own against Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, which is no small feat. Opposite, we also had Lars von Trier's Melancholia . It was quite a harvest, you could say that.

A legend was crumbling: thus, a comedy could take the prize. It wasn't just any comedy, though. The Swede pulverized the world of contemporary art, railed against political correctness, and didn't hesitate to display a delightful anarchism. No one has forgotten the odious migrant in a fast-food restaurant, the argument over a used condom, the charity dinner ruined by a fake gorilla's performance. The right-thinking people were offended. That was the goal. Ostlund repeated the feat in 2022 with Unfiltered. There, the right-thinking people were downright choked.