As Hollywood’s finest gather at Cannes Film Festival this week, the event’s strangest phenomenon – and greatest overindulgence – has been making headlines again: the standing ovation.
The French Riviera event breeds longer standing ovations than any typical night at London’s West End. In part, this is because, after the screening finishes at each world premiere, a camera swoops in on the cast and crew in attendance, and projects their faces onto the enormous Palais screen. Ovations perhaps only continue for so long because of the camera feed – each time its lens homes in on another star of the film, there are renewed claps and cheers.
