Ars Longa . . .

It is called the Cannes Film Festival, but as last week's events emphasized, the rightful name should be the Cannes Flesh Festival. The equalizer in many of the 24 pictures from 18 nations was nudity. In Yugoslavia's An Affair of the Heart, the camera zeroed in on a nude sex kitten playing with her black cat in bed. Denmark's The Red Mantle set some kind of longevity record for leering as it dwelled for ten minutes on a couple cavorting in and out of the sack.

Ironically, the only outrage stirred up at the festival was based not on what was seen but what was read--and by the French-speaking audiences at that. The furor concerned the Britishmade film Ulysses (TIME, March 31). which carried subtitles in French. A few of James Joyce's occasional vulgarisms failed to travel well in translation. One familiar Anglo-Saxon phrase, for example, was accompanied by a subtitle that read Mon anus royal Irlandais! Other subtitles, which by necessity were shortened to keep pace with the spoken dialogue, carried little of the poetic fantasy and whimsy of Joyce's writing. Apparently offended more by the crude translations than by the content, some members of the audience cried "Shameful!" "Indecent!"

Too Much Grease. Director Joseph Strick had greater cause for distress when he discovered that 20 lines of Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy had been blacked out of the subtitles. Storming into the projection booth, he was confronted by six guards. "That's my film!" Strick cried. "You've mutilated it, and you've got to stop the projection!" There was a struggle, and Strick was thrown out of the booth. Limping back to his balcony seat on a twisted ankle, he screamed, "Stop the projection! My film has been mutilated!" The picture continued to the end amid a riotous shouting contest in the audience.

Next day Strick denounced Festival Director Robert Favre Le Bret for his "barbaric, arrogant and intolerable action," and later announced that he was withdrawing the film from the competition. Le Bret replied that only the British film delegation could remove the picture, and that it was still in contention for the festival's top prize, which will be awarded this week.

At the height of the controversy, someone noticed that the Union Jack was missing from the array of national flags flying above the Palais du Festival. Had the British decided to boycott the festival? No. A photographer had hauled down the flag and wrapped a naked starlet in it for a beach picture.

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