By and large, the jury made good choices, which also reflected the tastes of most critics, beginning with Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon," which won the coveted Palme d'Or. Haunting from first frame to last, “White Ribbon,” a chronicle of the banality of evil in pre-WWI Germany, is arguably his masterpiece. Intense, uncompromising, and brilliant, the German-speaking film, shot n austere black-and-white, serves as a realistic portrait of one small German village circa 1913, as well as a socio-political parable of the German national character, sheding light on the rise of Facism in the 1930s.
