Ken Loach won the Palme D'Or today. I was delighted to see that. I love Ken Loach, and have always felt that his films were wildly under-appreciated. Finally, he gets a little of the recognition he has so long deserved.

Cannes is a curious thing. It's vulgar, it's phony, it's rubbish, and yet, it's a kind of Olympics. Every year, the olympic athletes of cinema, those whose films have scored the highest on the Cannes scale of cinematic excellence, compete. They compete for the Palme D'Or, but the Palme d'Or is just a symbol of the unending search for excellence.

Artisitic excellence is radically subjective, and the critieria behind the Cannes selections are just as ideological as those of any other film competition. But, for better or worse, Cannes sets the gold standard for the film community, a standard of excellence which carries with it the equivalent of a good housekeeping seal of approval.

And generally, the Cannes Film Festival has demonstrated remarkably good taste. The judges are only human, but I would wager that if one were forced to watch all of the Palme D'Or winners of the past 50 years back to back, and compare that experience to that of watching 50 of the Grand Prize winners of any of the other major film festivals, the Cannes winners would be the more satisfying.

Yes, it's a popularity contest, but popularity is the name of the game in the interplay of money and art that is contemporary film culture. And that an artist of the stature and integrity of Ken Loach can make a film that wins this popularity contest is good news indeed for the continued survival of the art form.