PARIS – France’s passion for cinema and its collective antipathy for President Bush made Wednesday’s opening of “Fahrenheit 9/11” a headline event that quickly proved a boon at the box office.

The movie that won the highest award at May’s Cannes Film Festival wracked up “extraordinary” ticket sales for its first afternoon showings in Paris, according to the MK2 movie chain.

Elevating the movie to an event, the left-leaning newspaper Liberation left the laudatory commentary to its nationally known executive editor. “Michael Moore is a television show unto himself,” Serge July wrote, praising the director as the “American Falstaff of documentaries.”

The cover of the Communist daily l’Humanite portrayed Moore dressed up like the Statue of Liberty, wearing a smile and a baseball cap.

Figures compiled by Mars Distribution, the movie’s French distributor, indicate 4,372 people attended the first afternoon show at movie theaters around Paris – versus 10 to 1,110 for other movies in town.

The figures are no surprise, considering that the French government spearheaded the opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and polls have shown that the French roundly disapprove of Bush.

The movie already had proved to be a record-breaking documentary in the United States, where it’s grossed $61.1 million since debuting June 23.