Something cuts loose in people here. Perhaps it’s an effect of the extraordinary light, which pushes everything to Platonic perfection. The sea sparkles like diamonds, the shade devours you like midnight, and colors blaze across your retina. One morning, I took a long walk past the old city with its church and museum, past all the low-rent tabacs and auto-body shops, until I finally reached Croix des Gardes, the quarter where the 19th-century English built their dream castles in blithely eclectic versions of Roman and Gothic and Palladian styles. What extravagant buildings they are! The mansion, Plein Ciel, whose towers rise crazily toward the sky; the Villa Victoria off the Avenue du Docteur-Picaud, with its violet-and-yellow trim and oddball chimneys; the unexpected gazebo that sits on the walkway along Croix des Gardes like an oversize sorcerer’s hat. The Brits who came to the south of France were obviously fleeing sobriety, and they indulged their taste for what has been dubbed Victorian Rogue Architecture—daring colors, fairy-tale turrets, wedding-cake ornateness. Looking at all this fanciful stuff, it suddenly hit me: Cannes was that era’s Las Vegas.
That surreal architectural sense survives today in such buildings as Marina Baie des Anges, an undulating ziggurat that looks as if its architect had taken mescaline and drifted into some Babylonian reverie. The structure’s strangeness is mirrored by the beehive of holiday flats known as Port-la-Galère, a fenced-in development on a rocky promontory west of Cannes. You might call it a piece of do-it-yourself Gaudí, if the great Spanish architect had believed not in God but in tourism.
Cannes is never more magical than at twilight, and near the end of my visit, I decided to enjoy dusk at one of the city’s treasures, Le Restaurant Arménien, out past the Martinez. Although in some theoretical sense it may not be the finest food in town, if I could only eat one meal in Cannes it would be here, under the amiably watchful eye of owner Christian Panossian and his wife Lucie (who does the cooking). The two brought at least 30 dishes—more than a dozen mezedes and grilled meats, until I cried uncle—and I sat by the sidewalk sipping Provençal wine and marveling at the evening’s slow descent. In Cannes, the cobalt-blue sky darkens and thickens over two full hours, and as the balmy night caressed me, the world strolled by to keep me company. An old man with a very young wife gave me a sly, ironic smile—he was pushing a pram. A young North African couple kissed open-mouthed with the indiscreet passion of youth. A ravishing brunette wriggled by on stiletto heels and met my gaze head-on: They still do that in France. As she passed, she gave me a smile that said, “Yes, I know.”
The breeze picked up—night here really is tender—and for the first time ever I fully grasped what I’d missed in all those years of racing around the festival. I understood why aristocrats, both real and imaginary, have been flocking to Cannes for the last 167 years. It’s a beautiful resort. Not a factory, or madhouse, or media event. A resort.
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