As the 51st Cannes Film Festival reached its mid-point yesterday, John Boorman's The General, starring Brendan Gleeson as the Dublin criminal Martin Cahill, joined the small group of films tipped for festival prizes at Sunday night's closing ceremony.
The General, which was given its world premiere in Cannes last night, is the first Irish entry selected to compete at the world's biggest film festival since Pat O'Connor's Cal in 1984. Back then, Helen Mirren was named best actress by the Cannes jury for her performance in the film. This year many of the media rank Brendan Gleeson as a front-runner for the best actor award.
Following the press screening of The General yesterday morning, John Boorman and Brendan Gleeson, along with Adrian Dunbar and Sean McGinley who also played roles in the film, took the platform for the obligatory press conference. The unusually polite nature of the exchanges reflected the positive international press response to the film.
Asked by the Boston Herald about the film's casting, John Boorman said: "There are 60 Irish actors in the film, and I was lucky to get so many really distinguished Irish actors to do it, some of them in very small roles."
On the casting of Jon Voight, the only non-Irish actor in the film, Boorman praised the American actor's facility with accents, adding that nobody who had seen the film in Ireland complained about Voight's Kerry accent. "Jon is kind of Mr Streep, really," he said. "I introduced him to this Irish policeman and Jon just took on his accent, his whole demeanour."
When a Brussels radio reporter raised the potential risk of turning the film into "an apology for a criminal", Brendan Gleeson said that was obviously a consideration. "If you base a film on someone who caused a lot of hurt to many people, you've got to be very careful from the beginning," he said. "We paid attention to how Cahill's life came to be what it was. It was a terrible tragic waste of all that energy, intelligence and humour. I think it is a film of great dignity which humanises the person but does not glorify his deeds."
Gleeson said one reason why Cahill could make fools of the Garda was because it was "a benign police force - for a while he was able to run around armed against unarmed police, but that's changed since and more and more police now carry guns in Ireland".
Responding to a question from LBC Radio in London, Gleeson said that researching the film was easy, given that so much of the story was in the public domain and there was so much detail in Paul Williams's book, The General, on which the film is based.
"We talked to the police as well, of course," he said. "And everyone in Dublin seems to have a story about Martin Cahill. You get into a taxi and you get three films' worth."
Asked by an Italian journalist about the casting of the Irish director, Jim Sheridan, in a cameo role as an anti-drugs activist, John Boorman replied that he asked him to play the role because Sheridan is "such a Dublin character and he has done some acting - Daniel Day-Lewis warned me that Jim has a habit of waving his hands up and down, so the only direction I gave Jim was to keep his hands in his pocket!"
Following the black-tie premiere of The General in the Festival Palais last night, the Irish Film Board, which invested in the film, and J & M Entertainment, which is selling the international distribution rights to it, hosted a party for some 150 guests in the Irish theme bar, Morrison's Public House, off the Rue d'Antibes in Cannes.