It’s hard to feel like you haven’t seen The Artist already and not just because of its nostalgic feel. It caused a storm at Cannes back in May and has been seemingly mentioned ever since. The latter no doubt due to the ever significant involvement of Harvey Weinstein, lumbering over the project as an oligarch would over a Premier league football team. He, whose award bothering is legendary and has assured he’ll be there again this year with his current batch of films (along with The Artist, Weinstein is behind The Iron Lady, My Week with Marilyn and Madonna’s W.E). He snapped up The Artist after its showing at Cannes and its prolonged award-season release date is no coincidence.
By now the story is familiar, it’s a silent, black and white film directed by Parisian Michel Hazanavicius following the story of a fading silent movie star during the birth of the talkies, told in the style of the age it portrays. Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, the biggest star of Hollywood’s silent era alongside his ever-present companion (a clinically well observed performance by scene-stealer and rising animal acting star, Uggie the Jack Russell). Opposite is Peppy Miller, played by Breenice Bojo, a young unknown whose opportunistic and literal bump into Valentin on the red carpet sets her on the road to stardom. She is helped in no small part by her bumpee on that carpet and it is he who comes up with her gimmick and ultimately her selling point, the beauty spot. She arrives at the beginning of sound recording in films andHollywood’s subsequent upheaval while Valentin still in full pomp arrogantly dismisses the movement as a fad and, when he is made aware that his services are no longer required by his studio, embarks on a go-it-alone project with a self-financed, written, directed and starring silent romantic adventure.
The two formats, in true Hollywood (and Britpop) style, go head-to-head when his silent is released on the same day as the studio’s talkie and our hero witnesses first hand to which the crowds are flocking.
The plot may well be familiar and a modern audience might find some of the symbolism a bit much (one scene has the two stars cross on a staircase – her going up and he going down) but the very notion of the Hollywood ending was born out of the very films The Artist depicts and in a way this is exactly the point of the film. Its telling is truly engaging and none of these old-school techniques feel laboursome or cheap. Everything is done with such detail and admiration of the time it reflects that it never veers from homage into parody. The two lead performances are excellent, with both wonderfully nailing the traits of these 20’s stars, him all winks and grins and her coquettish charm that go hand in hand with the framing, lighting and montage used by Hazanavicius to ensure the film truly mirrored those of the 1920’s.
On leaving the cinema I overheard an elderly viewer turn to her partner and comment “I was about to say they don’t make them like that anymore, but evidently they do!” This almost feels like the point of the film itself, to be so true to a format long thought dead that it not only regenerates it but does so with such care and honesty that it can bring a whole new audience to those older gems.
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