Weinstein Company
George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) are a showbiz couple in "The Artist."
By a happy chance, two of the most satisfying movies of 2011 are an American homage to French silent films and a French homage to American silent films. The first, Martin Scorsese's extraordinary "Hugo," reminds us of the transformative power of cinema. "The Artist" has more modest aims: It asks us to appreciate the skill that made a unique art form remarkably popular by sticking to the rules of that era.
Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius limits himself to the tools of a silent movie: written title cards, a broadly expressive acting style, black-and-white photography, leisurely cutting that lets us take in physical details at length. (Hazanavicius shared editing chores with Anne-Sophie Bion.) Ludovic Bource's music underscores each mood: buoyant, anguished, excited, contemplative. Had "The Artist" been made 75 years ago, it might have been brushed aside as melodrama. Today, its affection for a lost past strikes the right note of wistful nostalgia.
Hollywood made silent features for less than 20 years, from the early 1910s to about 1930. (Charles Chaplin persisted longer, but virtually no one else did.) And "The Artist" begins in 1927, as roguish George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) enjoys box-office success for his most recent generic spy flick.
Audiences, especially women, fuss over him; one of them, aptly named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), even gives him a kiss at the premiere. She gets into his next movie as an extra, dances with him and forms a bond that's half a fan crush and half a serious attraction.
The head of Kinograph Studios (John Goodman) warns his leading man that sound is on the way in; anyone who clings to the old way will be swept into oblivion. George believes his public won't care. He quits Kinograph, funds a new silent movie that eats up most of his savings, and suffers further in the 1929 stock market crash. From there, the movie charts his fall and Peppy's rise, as she eclipses his celebrity but comes to care for him.
Dujardin combines the qualities of many silent stars: Chaplin's nimbleness, Douglas Fairbanks' dash, John Gilbert's romantic allure.
Bejo has no obvious model in the silent era. Her cheerful sexiness and long-legged tap steps suggest Eleanor Powell, the 1930s dancer, though Bejo is a sharper actress: The camera falls in love with her, as cinematographers used to say.
Hazanavicius has a serious point here: Sound isn't "better" than silence, just as color isn't "better" than black and white. (Indeed, he uses strategically positioned ambient sounds to make a point.) Talkies may have killed silent movies, the way TV serials and soap operas wiped out radio dramas. But there are stories most effectively told in the old style, and "The Artist" is proof.
