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When he received the Légion d'honneur on 1^st April 2009, 65-year-old Canadian director David Cronenberg had already been named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, and an honorary citizen of Paris, Cannes and Tourrettes-sur-Loup.

In an interview Cronenberg said, ‘The French have always understood the cinema as art.  And they were the first in the world to do so. I came to France in the early seventies, at a time when Hollywood was still primarily thinking of film as a disposable consumer item. They were not even keeping a lot of the negatives of the films that were made. Once consumed they were gone

‘My relationship with France developed from there. They were strong and supportive of my films from the beginning. They understood genre filmmaking ... and that just because a film was a horror [movie], it didn't mean it was automatically cheesy and tacky. That even a horror could have some traction on its own, and be evaluated for what it was.’ [ADD]

(Source: globeandmail.com)