The festival made its strongest mark right at the beginning.
The Patrouille de France, the French Air Force's aerobatic team, used the jets of their Alpha Jets to paint a tricolor in the sky over the Croisette.
The honor was not for a local film but for the sequel to the 36-year-old blockbuster Top Gun, and the man who accepted it was never a Cannes regular: Tom Cruise.
Andrew Kilb
Feature correspondent in Berlin.
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After receiving a standing ovation from the gala audience in the festival palace, he said the most disarming sentence a Hollywood actor can say to his fans: "You are my life." So they embraced, the star and the festival, its red carpet to the stars.
The film that was shown afterwards no longer mattered.
Such reconciliations should not be trusted.
This time you had to.
Shortly before, at a question and answer session (here it's called "Rendezvous") in front of a thousand listeners in the second largest festival cinema, they had learned that the youthfulness that Cruise still exudes in "Top Gun: Maverick" is the result of hard work and flattering lighting is.
The almost sixty-year-old doesn't look like young Tom now, but more like the late James Garner.
From the best to the just good years
From the best years he changes to the just good ones.
This also applies to the festival, which will be 75 this year, but only wants to acknowledge this anniversary to a limited extent.
Posters from the days when Romy Schneider, Marcello Mastroianni, Martin Scorsese and tutti quanti held court in Cannes are hanging everywhere in the streets and on every site fence.
But the handful of classic films that have been restored and digitized for the occasion are shown in small halls or at night on a distant beach.
The festival shows its age in every buttonhole.
Not a single debut film was screened this time in competition.
On the other hand, two-thirds of the contributions came from directors who have already won at least one of the main prizes.
So does Swede Ruben Östlund and the Belgian Dardenne brothers, who appear to have a season ticket for the Palme d'Or race.
Lo and behold, both – or rather all three – fulfilled the expectations associated with the invitation to Cannes.
The first half hour of Östlund's "Triangle of Sadness" features a young couple (both models) arguing over money and gender issues.
Then the two check in on a luxury yacht cruising somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.
As in a hotel film, the other guests are introduced: a drunken captain (Woody Harrelson), a Russian oligarch, a British couple whose company produces landmines, a woman in a wheelchair (Iris Berben) and a champagne-addicted blonde (Sunnyi Melles).
One sunbathes, fattens and is bored, then a storm comes up and the pleasure boat becomes a ship of fools.
Pleasure boat and ship of fools
Everyone screams and throws up (only the captain and the oligarch keep drinking while talking about Marx and Lenin) until a pirate boat appears on the horizon and sinks the yacht.
The survivors save themselves on an island.