Family’s archive of the glamour of Cannes

The photograph of Elizabeth Taylor is perhaps the most eloquent demonstration of the difference between “then” and “now”.

Can you imagine the scene were Angelina Jolie to stride down a public beach in nothing more than a bikini? One suspects that personal space would not be respected and members of the public would not make polite requests for a photograph before snapping away.

Yet that was the scene at the Cannes Festival in 1950 with one of the world’s biggest movie stars.

Serge Toubiana explains the story of the photograph, taken by Henri Traverso: “Elizabeth Taylor poses in a bathing suit for amateur photographers. Notice how they keep a respectful distance, while she seems to be completely lacking in affectation, almost shy, as though she was a girlfriend or younger sister.”

For four generations the Traverso family have had a front seat to the most glamorous film festival of all. The Cannes film festival is the most beautiful of film festivals, every year a magnet for the brightest film stars in the world.

Images from the famous festival are beamed around the world. These days the images are depressingly uniform in their presentation. Brad and Angelina on the red carpet. Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet. Woody Allen on the red carpet. Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman, you guessed it, on the red carpet.

The men and women behind the cameras are penned in behind railings. Ansell Adams wouldn’t come away from such scrums with anything pleasing to look at.

It was not ever thus, and the family with the photographic evidence to prove it are the Traversos. This family, whose name has become synonymous with the famous festival, settled in Cannes from Italy, in 1850.

In 1919 Auguste was the first to register his trade as photographer. It became a family trade passed through generations to today with Auguste’s great-grandson Gilles Traverso carrying on the tradition.

Auguste’s great fortune was to choose a family business and a small town in France that aligned perfectly to create an opportunity to capture images of the world’s biggest stars. For the Traversos it has always been all in a day’s work. A collection of their images, from the abandoned festival in 1939 right up to Cate Blanchett arriving in Cannes in 2010, have been brought together in a book, Cannes Cinema, released to coincide with this year’s festival which runs until May 22.

What makes the archive this book represents truly remarkable is not its sheer size – there are 170,000 negatives and counting – but that it gets under the skin of the festival because, like all good photo-journalists, the Traversos have got under the skin of the town that just happens to play annual host to one of the most famous film festivals in the world.

Toubiana says: “The Traversos’ everyday work consists of photographing marriages, communions and baptisms as well as official and prestigious events. Well known in their city, they have special connections with the most prestigious venues. The first of these was the Palm Beach, with which the Traversos enjoyed a kind of exclusivity, taking photographs of the celebrities who went there in the evenings to dine or play in the casino.”

Auguste Traverso was there in early September 1939 when the mayor of Cannes arrived at the town’s train station to welcome Louis Lumiere who had been invited to be honorary president of the first Cannes Film Festival, an event that was due to last until September 20. Traverso captured the images of the town mayor receiving perhaps the most famous early cinematographer and would likely have taken other photographs at the first festival – had World War Two not started within a couple of days of Lumiere’s arrival, bringing the festival to a premature end.

In 1946, Auguste’s grandson was at the same train station alongside his aunt Germaine, who had taken the reins of the family business. Henri was there to capture them all in those early days – Rita Hayworth, Tyrone Power, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren.

Toubiana says: “Year by year the crowd gathering on the promenade de la Croisette grew larger and more visible. Nevertheless, the atmosphere remained convivial.

“The public thronged around the stars. Robert Mitchum played petanque, while Jeanne Moreau got up on a restaurant table in La Napoule to sing.

“This was still the age when stars did not hide away and were happy to stroll peacefully along le Croisette, offering themselves up to the gaze of the photographers.”

Henri Traverso himself says: “Cinema was a joy for them, stars came to be seen, that was part of the game.”

Like his grandfather, Henri Traverso worked with a Rolleiflex – long before today’s age of digital, disposable photography, each click of the camera had to count.

The Sixties heralded a change, the event becoming noisier, flashier and higher profile. It was a harbinger of things to come. Through the coming decades the images became less intimate, less spontaneous.

No longer would we see Bardot running down a beach at the request of Henri, who wanted to capture the elegance of her movement.

Despite this, the Traverso family, today represented by Auguste’s great-grandson Gilles, continues to record the famous festival, glamour, beauty and all.

Cannes Cinema, photographs by The Traversos, text by Serge Toubiana, £25 published by Cahiers du Cinéma.

World’s most famous festival

The inaugural Cannes film festival was slated to start in September, 1939 – city officials were hoping to use it to extend the summer tourist season – but the outbreak of war brought an early closure. In 1946 it returned, featuring David Lean’s Brief Encounter and Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.

In 1955 The Palme D’Or was awarded to the best film in competition for the first time.

In 1978, Gilles Jacob was appointed Director-General. That year, he created the Un Certain Regard selection.

In 1997, on the 50th anniversary, the Palme des Palmes was awarded to Ingmar Bergman.