Less luxury at Cannes Film Festival

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Play VideoWorld cinema heavyweights head to Cannes

This year's festival at Cannes is expected to see studios cutting back due to the recession, with the "feel good" factor at the famously extravagant get together expected to be muted.

The stars will still turn up and the movie line-up looks good but the tone of the Cannes film festival will be more black and white than technicolor in 2009.

The credit crunch means Hollywood studios are tightening their belts and extravagance is temporarily out of fashion.

But while the shadow cast over the glitz and glamour maybe bad for business, it may actually be good for the films and their directors.

Thierry Fremaux, Cannes Festival director said, "The crisis is there, the crisis is around the world, it is a financial crisis and it's also a moral crisis almost, and Cannes, not us, not the festival, but around Cannes, perhaps it was just too much sometimes, too much partying. This year perhaps we can think about the cinema, not the stars and the starlets and the excessiveness of Cannes but the emphasis on the films."

While they will always be full during the festival, even the more prestigious hotels are noticing the crunch.

Emmanul Caux from the Majestic Barrier Hotel said, "Two or three weeks ago I would have been more pessimistic, but maybe a little bit more cautious. I think the key thing is that our bookings came later than last year. Major companies and other companies have been a little bit more cautious and they have booked later."

Their rooms might be full, but the Majestic was among those worrying that the event might suffer from the slump in spending, Caux said.

Vanity Fair magazine, which last year held one of the festival's glitziest parties, is not coming to Cannes. Demand for luxury yachts on the harbor has been slow, and the wine flowing is from the mid-range price list.

Linda Taylor, a restaurant owner said, "I think it will be busy, busy, a lot of people, but not as much as many years before, it won't be a film festival like the good old years."

The opening ceremony kicks off 12 days of screenings, interviews, red carpet appearances and late-night revelry in the palm-lined resort, which attracts many of the most glamorous and powerful figures in the business.