Film Review: The Artist

 

Image: Warner Bros.     Text: Thirza Vallois

To celebrate the multiple wins and Oscar frenzy for France's The Artist, VINGT Paris asked noted Paris expert Thirza Vallois, author of multiple guide books including the acclaimed Around and About Paris series, for an historical perspective on the film.

Some encounters with movies are like falling in love: a combination of the right ingredients and the right timing. The overwhelming success of The Artist is one such example. The public simply love it, as do critics and juries:  witness the spectacular number of awards and nominations showered on it from all quarters, not least three Golden Globes in January,  its recent BAFTAs sweep, and 10 nominations paving the road to the Academy Awards on Sunday. Only Martin Scorsese's Hugo has done slightly better with 11 nominations, but The Artist has racked up more of the "big" ones - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay.  This is a fairytale destiny for the little French film that could.  Up against big-budget giants like The Descendants, Moneyball and Hugo, The Artist is only other French film ever to be nominated for Best Picture (preceded by Roman Polanski’s The Pianist in 2002).

At first glance the ingredients seem meager - a black-and-white movie that doesn't even talk. The storyline is linear and simple, the special effects subtle, the dialogue minimal. Like its neck-to-neck contender Hugo, The Artist goes back to the early days of cinema, telling the story of George Valentin, a Hollywood star during the silent era who is left on the roadside after the arrival of the talkies. 

Hugo for its part takes us even farther back, and all the way to France to pay homage, in a convoluted way, to the first "cinemagician", Georges Méliès, whose real-life career also ended sadly.  It makes sense that Scorsese has resorted to the new 3D technology  when celebrating the father of special effects.  But unlike Méliès's movies, not least Un Voyage dans la Lune (1902) – often considered the first science fiction movie – the technology fails to give a sense of wonder. 

In The Artist, on the other hand, director Michel Hazanavicius has managed to sweep audiences worldwide off their feel using what, at first glance, appears to be the most basic technology: black and white film. Almost immediately, the viewer is taken by the charm of the lead actors: the dashing Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, adorable Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller, and Uggie the Jack Russell terrier who nearly steals the show. The supporting actors are just as polished, most convincing as déjà vu prototypes of the silent era  (e.g. John Goodman as the Hollywood producer, James Cromwell as the loyal chauffeur, Penelope Ann Miller as the unsympathetic wife).  As delightful as our protagonists, the supporting cast bring to mind old favourites such as Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and Modern Times, or Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, whilst the plot itself echoes A Star is Born and Singin’ in the Rain. For not unlike Hugo, The Artist too is an homage to old masters and movies, delivered in this instance as a love song to Hollywood. 

Equally enchanting is the visual beauty of the film, thanks to Guillaume Schiffman whose cinematography already amazed us in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.  Once more we are reminded of the stylishness and warmth of black and white photography, of the emotional power mere light and shadow can exert, as illustrated in the above-mentioned Citizen Kane, and of course the master himself, Alfred Hitchcock. Notorious comes to mind. And Hitchcock, too, is celebrated in The Artist, although paradoxically by way of sound, and perhaps the film’s most brilliant, at times witty, feature. Ludovic Bruce's fantastic score reminds us that silent movies were accompanied by live music, often by a sole pianist, sometimes by a full-scale orchestra.  Music definitely plays an integral part in Hitchcock’s films, carrying forward the action and punctuating the suspense. Paying tribute to Bernard Hermann who created some of Hitchcock’s most memorable scores, and who earlier had composed the music for Citizen Kane, Ludovic Bource openly integrates a fragment of the iconic theme for Vertigo.  Despite Kim Novak’s accusations of artistic “rape”, in keeping with every aspect of The Artist, Bource was clearly inspired by the great masters but plagiarised none. 

But The Artist is first and foremost a story, a fairytale (both in content and its own career), a love story (between George Valentin and Peppy Miller,  and  with Hollywood itself), providing sheer pleasure to an audience oversatiated by the special effects of contemporary technology. Cashing in on the sleek, fluid fashion and décor of its time period  — 1927 to 1931 — the movie is presented to us in chic, glamorous Art Deco style pleasing to sit back and dream one’s way into, as audiences did way back when cinema was known as "the dream factory".  Handsome Jean Dujardin and the lively Bérénice Béjo are the perfect prototypes of the era.  We can't help falling for them both as we glide along the seamlessly connected sequences of The Artist's streamlined plot, brilliantly crafted by Michel Hazanavicius, the movie’s ultimate artist.

Comments

[c. clark]

Guess I will have to see it again; I fell asleep the first time.