The 7 Most Divisive Palme d’Or Winners: ‘Wild at Heart,’ ‘Titane,’ and More

You only have to take a quick look at a ranking of the Palme d’Or winners to recognize that the winners circle for the prize represents some of cinema’s greatest accomplishments. “Taxi Driver,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Parasite,” “Paris, Texas,” “The Leopard,” and many more masterpieces were correctly bestowed Cannes’ highest honor, and the swaths of great films to receive the Palme since the festival’s beginning in 1946 have given the prize a prestige that arguably surpasses the Oscar or more widely recognizable trophies.

But the quality of any film is a subjective matter, and every Palme d’Or is ultimately decided not by an exact science, but by a small jury handpicked every year to judge the titles in the festival’s main competition. So, for all the great movies in the Palme pantheon, there are plenty that haven’t aged well in the decades since, or those that were greeted by the general cinephile world as underwhelming choices at the time of their crowning.

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And then, there are the choices that inspire love and devotion from those that like them, but scorn from the naysayers. Cannes is a notoriously polarizing festival where emotions get amplified by the hype that runs thick in the Croisette — think of how many films received loud boos upon their premiere, and how many received upward of 10-minute standing ovations. It’s not shocking, in this context, that the winner of the festival’s top prize has a tendency to draw aggressive reactions, whether positive or negative.

Some of the most divisive Palme picks include deliberately shocking and upsetting movies, ones like “Titane” that rather obviously weren’t made for everyone. And then there’s the classic robbery complaints that any winner of any reward will typically have to shake, but are particularly prominent when the Palme goes to a surprise victor. Whatever the case, for all the universally beloved Palme winners, there are plenty of others that draw a less firm consensus.

As we await to see which of the Palme d’Or contenders this year take the prize, IndieWire is revisiting some of the more divisive Palme recipients in recent memory. Read on for a list of the most divisive Palme d’Or winners ever.

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