The Artist (2011) - film review

Hollywood, 1927.  George Valentin is a star of silent cinema on whom the sun has never ceased to shine.  But the arrival of sound looks set to send him into obscurity.  Meanwhile, Peppy Miller, a young bit-player, is about to be propelled to stardom.  This is the story of two tender souls who fall in love but who face being torn apart by fame, fortune and pride as cinema stands on the threshold of a new era...

At a time when cinema is going through its most profound upheaval, breaching frontiers that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago (thanks in part to the 3-D and YouTube revolutions), it seems odd - almost surreal - that the most highly rated French film of 2011 should be one that takes us back in time, to the dimly remembered days of silent cinema.   Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist is an affectionate homage to the old black-and-white silent film, but it is clearly far more than that.  It is a potent statement on the transience of fame (a cautionary message for today’s celebrity-obsessed youngsters) but, more crucially, it is the keenest observation on the mutability and versatility of the cinematic art form.  After a hundred years of steady evolution, brought about by gradual improvements in filmmaking technology, cinema now stands on the brink of a new age of artistic freedom, much as it did in the late 1920s when sound suddenly came to revolutionise the medium.   The Artist celebrates this new lease of life for cinema and confidently - almost brazenly - assures us that in this brave new world there is a place for the silent film.  And why not?  As the old saying goes, silence is golden...

Director Michel Hazanavicius has long dreamed of making a silent film, but no one took him seriously until he struck box office gold with his two spy thriller pastiches, OSS 117: Le Caire nid d’espions (2006) and OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (2009), which parodied to death the 1960s spy movie (of the James Bond variety).  Hazanavicius’s penchant for cinematic mimicry and his ability to attract a large mainstream audience secured him backing for his riskiest venture to date, and one that may well prove to be his biggest worldwide success: an affectionate billet doux to the pre-sound golden age of Hollywood.   With the support of producer Thomas Langmann, Hazanavicius was able to make the film in Hollywood, where he had access not only to the back lot and studios at Warner Brothers and Paramount, but also to the house that belonged to the legendary actress Mary Pickford.  Trivia fans should note that the bed in which the film’s hero wakes up once belonged to Pickford.

Although The Artist was made in Hollywood, Michel Hazanavicius was reluctant to employ a completely American cast, and so he selected two established French actors - Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo - for the two lead roles, that of the silent film star George Valentin (whose days are most definitely numbered) and the rising starlet Peppy Miller.  Dujardin had headlined Hazanavicius’s previous OSS 117 films and had played opposite Bejo in OSS 117: Le Caire nid d’espions.   Anyone expecting Dujardin to send up the film, as he had done in the OSS 117 films, will be surprised by the depth and subtlety of his performance in The Artist.  Whilst the character he plays is something of a grotesque archetype, a deluded narcissist whose sole reason for living is fame, Dujardin compels us to feel for him, to see the fragility beneath the bluster, and to share his despair as his world comes tumbling down amidst the wholesale purge that ended many a glorious Hollywood career in the late 1920s.   Modelling his screen persona on that of Douglas Fairbanks, Dujardin looks surprisingly at home in silent cinema, and when he’s not wowing us with his tap dancing skills (eat your heart out Fred Astaire), he’s playing havoc with our heartstrings when the tragedy of his character’s predicament hits home.

Bejo seems to be equally comfortable with the silent format, every bit as expressive as Dujardin and very nearly as radiantly beautiful as Garbo in her heyday (her inspiration was the young Joan Crawford).  The other star of the film is Uggie, an adorable eight-year-old Jack Russell who plays Dujardin’s ever-faithful pooch Jack.  Following a long and distinguished canine tradition, Uggie has little difficulty stealing the focus from his human co-stars and very nearly steals the entire film, which explains why he was given a special award (the Palm Dog) at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.  Dujardin was not overlooked - the Cannes jury honoured him with the Best Actor Award, although this precluded the film from winning the festival’s top award.   With many more awards ceremonies in the offing - the Golden Globes, the Oscars, the Césars... - the film, its lead actor, and its lead animal support, could all be on the receiving end of some very big prizes.  Uggie’s present owners may even have to fork out for a new mantelpiece if his streak of good fortune continues.

Unlike Hazanavicius’s previous OSS 117 films, which were blatant parodies and a little too silly to be taken seriously by art house audiences, The Artist is lovingly sympathetic to the genre that inspired it, so much so that it could almost be mistaken for a long-forgotten silent classic.  The plot is little more than mechanical reworking of Singin in the Rain (1952) and A Star is Born (1954), pure Hollwood-style melodrama of the kind that is all too easily derided by today’s cynically minded audiences.  What makes the film so effective is its authentic, and so seductively stylish, 1920s feel.   Hazanavicius takes his inspiration from the true masters of the silent era - Charlie Chaplin, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, King Vidor, Tod Browning and F.W. Murnau - and in doing so creates a vibrant work of art that is both a worthy tribute to the age of silent cinema and an exhilarating treat for a modern mainstream film audience.  There is no better therapy for the present recessionary blues than this marvellous jolt of glitzy escapism.  

The lush black-and-white cinematography comes close to mirroring both the exquisite lyricism of Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) and the brooding intensity of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), and you can’t help wondering if a film can look as stunningly beautiful as this in monochrome why filmmakers ever went over to colour.  Meanwhile, the camerawork has the startling fluidity of Lang, Browning and Vidor’s grander cinematic masterpieces, seemingly revelling in the freedom from today’s filmmaking conventions, like a bird that has just been allowed outside its cage.  Ludovic Bource’s evocative period score is the perfect substitute for scripted dialogue, eloquently expressing the feelings of the protagonists as they are swept along by a whirlwind of fate.  The story may be mundane and a tad predictable, but technically the film is flawless, a symphony of charm and elegance that cannot fail to delight.  

For devotees of the silent classic, The Artist will not disappoint - indeed it may even deepen your appreciation for a style of film expression that, far from being out-dated, has a poetry, deeper truth and timeless quality that few of today’s more technically sophisticated films can match.  For those lucky, lucky people who have yet to experience the joys of the silent film, The Artist must come as something of a revelation, a magic door that takes the spectator into a world of marvels yet to be discovered, a world of silent wonder.

© James Travers 2012

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