Finally, after months of hype, anticipation, condemnation by the Vatican and a media debate about Tom Hanks's hairstyle, the Cannes Film Festival yesterday provided a forum for people who had actually seen The Da Vinci Code movie to discuss it.
Dozens of journalists had to be turned away from the packed lunchtime press conference where over 100 TV cameras lined the back of the room like a firing squad.
As director Ron Howard and his six leading actors took to the platform, the applause was tepid, reflecting the lukewarm reaction at the Cannes press screening of the film which opens all over the world tomorrow.
Leading US film trade paper Variety had posted its review of the film, in which its chief film critic, Todd McCarthy, dismissed The Da Vinci Code as "oppressively talky" and "a stodgy, grim thing in its exceedingly literal-minded film version". He concluded that the "result is perhaps the best thing the project's critics could have hoped for".
When the negative early reviews were raised, Howard said he had not read any. He also denied widespread claims the film had been kept under such a cloak of secrecy that he did not have any US test screenings of it.
And he refused to be drawn on the box-office prospects for his film. "I've made a lot of commercial films," he said, "but I've stopped prognosticating a long time ago."
Asked about attacks on the film from churches, Tom Hanks, the star of the film, said: "I view this film as a great opportunity to discuss and clarify our views about our existence. It is fiction. It is a commercial enterprise. It is not a documentary."
Howard added: "My feeling is that, given the controversial nature of the story, the film will be upsetting to some people. I recommend that people who feel it may upset them should not go, or they should wait until someone they know and trust has seen it and can advise them about going to see it. This is entertainment, not theology."
One cast member, Alfred Molina, chose to shoot the messengers, telling the assembled press the controversy had been stirred up by the media "looking for a juicy story".
Another member of the cast, Ian McKellen, who is gay, said: "When I read the book I believed it entirely. Then, when I put the book down, I thought, 'what a load of potential codswallop'. But if it says that Jesus was married, that proves he was not gay."
Given all the fuss about his coiffure in the film, and that the early reviews were not favourable, Hanks was asked if he was having a good or a bad hair day. "It's not up to me to assess if I've got good hair," he said. "That's up to the press, who will decide if I do and then spread it around the world at lightning speed."
Hanks was then asked if he agreed with the claim in the Guinness Book of Records he is the most successful screen actor of all time in terms of the profits generated by his films. "If I had a few Guinness inside me, I might say that," he joked. "But if you allow for inflation, I'm probably ranked down there somewhere between Mickey Rooney and Francis the Talking Mule."
When Hanks was asked what he thought of Iceland, it was clearly time to wind up the press conference.
Meanwhile, it was announced in Cannes yesterday that Woody Allen has cast Colin Farrell in his next film, which is as yet untitled and will be shot in London over the summer.
Farrell and Ewan McGregor will play brothers drifting into crime. This is Allen's second film in three years to feature an Irish actor, following Match Point, which starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers and opened the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
'Code' 'Da Vinci Code' not destined to be a classic
By Donald Clarke
The Da Vinci Code, the long-awaited (or dreaded) film version of Dan Brown's bestseller concerning intrigue in the Catholic Church, finally arrives in cinemas across the world tomorrow.
Billboards and websites everywhere have been decorated with gloomy reproductions of the Mona Lisa. Yet the film, which cost $125 million (€98 million) to make, has received so much free publicity as a result of the various controversies surrounding it, one half wonders why Sony Pictures felt the need to advertise at all.
Its imminent release has sparked many protests from Christian groups. The release in India looks likely to be delayed after Islamic clerics in Mumbai elected to support the call for a boycott by local Catholics. In South Korea the Christian Council has sought unsuccessfully to have the film banned outright.
In Ireland, cinema-goers in Dublin, Belfast, Newry and Derry will be greeted by volunteers distributing free copies of the Irish Catholic newspaper which has brought out a special issue to coincide with the release of the movie.
It rebuts claims in the book and the movie, and includes contributions from senior church officials and leading art historians.
Sad to relate, the film has turned out be a great deal less interesting. Weighed down by swathes of indigestible dialogue and retarded in pace by a profusion of facile parlour riddles, it is as dull as ditchwater. It should, nonetheless, make millions.
Donald Clarke's review appears in The Ticket tomorrow