Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux was a guest on Le Figaro’s Culture podcast. He actually spoke at length about Scorsese.
He mentions that last November Scorsese invited him to his private screening room in New York to watch “Killers of the Flower Moon”. The cut he saw was 3 hours 40 minutes. This means Scorsese cut 14 minutes of the film in the final edit.
So, why did Scorsese decide to premiere ‘Killers’ at Cannes? Fremaux tells the story of how in 2017 he mentioned to Scorsese that if “Silence” had premiered at Cannes, instead of going straight to theaters, it would have been better received.
I believe that. “Silence” was basically shut out from the Oscars that year. It’s a great movie and one that deserved a better fate than the one it got.
In fact, it’s pretty close to an imperfect masterpiece; An epic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Some of the shots Scorsese pulled off in “Silence” still haunt me to this day.
Fremaux reiterates the notion that Hollywood studios are too scared to premiere a film at Cannes because the attending press can be very harsh. The last American film to win the Palme d’Or was Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.”
He mentions how Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” received no prizes from the 2019 jury, but still wound up with many Oscar nominations. In fact, only four American films have won the Palme d’Or in the last 30 years: “Pulp Fiction,” “Elephant,” “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Tree of Life.”
A fun anecdote has 2007 jury president Stephen Frears telling Fremaux “we’re about to make a mistake,” alluding to the decision not to give the Palme d’Or to “No Country For Old Men.” The Palme instead went to Cristi Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and Days.”