After several missed opportunities and too long a wait, my wife and I finally saw The Artist last night – a lovely French movie (rated PG-13) about classic Hollywood that seems to be a shoo-in for an Academy Award in a number of important categories, and for good reason. Academy politics aside, it’s beautiful and fun. It’s also truly entertaining – and yet it asks for so little from the audience.
I had been waiting to see The Artist ever since it debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Around that time, I found the trailer via a friend’s Facebook post. It was captivating; but what really intrigued me about the movie wasn’t what the trailer hinted at, but what I knew for a fact was missing from the movie: The Artist is not only in black and white, but it’s also – for the most part – a silent movie. This is not merely a clever gimmick concocted by writer/director Michel Hazanavicius, but a creative choice that – in his skilled hands – enhances the audience’s experience of the film. For there is no easier way to enjoy a movie than to simply watch it: allowing the images to communicate the story to our retinas, which in turn transmit the story to our brain, without the additional step of interpreting dialogue interfering in the process: pure cinema. All you have to do is watch. And maybe listen to some incidental sound or an evocative film score. It is a rare experience nowadays, when so many movies inform us with a voiceover or dialogue as to what is happening on the screen (something better suited for radio, I believe).
It takes a lot of skill to be able to write and direct pure cinema, so it’s understandable that movie audiences experience it so rarely. Even silent movies had to resort to the occasional title card to communicate dialogue back in the day (as does The Artist). But a recent example that comes to mind is Pixar’s Wall-E – its first act, if not the whole movie, is sparse on dialogue and lacks any voiceover narration whatsoever.
But technique aside, The Artist is entertaining. It’s fun to watch, funny and charming – and sometimes heartbreaking, as we follow fictional silent movie superstar George Valentin (personified by the perfectly cast Jean Dujardin) struggle to find a place for himself in the all-new movie industry that emerges as talkies become the norm in late 1920′s Hollywood.
Dujardin’s co-star is Bérénice Bejo, also perfectly cast as Peppy Miller, the ingenue who arrives in Hollywood at the right place and the right time – and who in a way owes her first big break to Valentin.
But there is more than just a good story here. At its heart, The Artist is a meditation on loyalty, a theme you see the director exploring constantly – and not just in the main character’s delightful give-and-take with his dog – even in the darkest implications of the most insidious of loyalties: the inflexible loyalty to oneself that is pride.
Don’t let all the awards season hype turn you off (it ain’t hype if it’s true). The Artist is a movie you’ll love to watch – and which you will not soon forget, whether you like artsy movies or not; whether you are a movie history buff or not. The movie’s artsy side is largely in its execution: everything about it is beautiful – from its attention to detail to how it tells its story. It simply works. John Goodman, James Cromwell, and Penelope Ann Miller appear in supporting roles.
Categories: Movies, Pop Culture of the Past
Excellent review (which means I agree with you). I am one Academy voter who will be voting for “The Artist” in many categories. It was the Best Picture of the year for me.
I had the feeling you would agree, Mr. Simon! It’s a valentine to two of the most positive aspects of the industry: innovation and loyalty, as perhaps only a non-Hollywood filmmaker – from the outside looking in – could create.
I think film audiences are exposed to more pure cinema than you think; they simply ignore those considerations and reduce the entire thing to a plot in pikktures.
How often do you have a friend say a film had great editing that made all the difference in how the story was told, such as “Apocalypto,” to name one of dozens, in favor of talking about that same film as if it was a novel?
How often do you have a friend say “Gangs of New York” had its story compromised by art direction out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon rather than saying they just didn’t like the story and never entirely grasping why?
Films fail on succeed on their filmic merits; people just don’t acknowledge it but we are a long way from filmed plays like “Dracula.”
I don’t quite understand your comment.
Okay, watch “Apocalypto.” Notice all the very clever editing that was put in there on purpose and which helps define and propel the story forward while also addressing pace and lack of it.
Then notice how many reviews or comments by people will reduce the movie down to the status of a novel as if how interesting or believable the plot was was really the sole consideration there. Film is a language and it is not literature.
“Apocalypto” and many films rise and fall on how the music can be an equal partner to how the film is perceived as with the brilliant musical score for “Islands In the Stream” with George C. Scott.
They rise and fall on the screenplay, the execution of that screenplay by the use of good casting, cinematography, angles, movement, acting, etc.
It must be distressing to filmmakers how much stuff they put into film which actually does move the viewer but without the viewer realizing how they have been manipulated and then saying “The story sucked.”
When you see a bad film like the (2006) WW II era horror film “Horrors of War,” you’ll be amazed at how you suddenly see all the stuff missing you never noticed before. The acting is poor as is the staging, editing, set decoration and dressing and the whole nine yards. A film like that is relatively rare. American film making is that high quality.
Another Disney/Pixar that touches on great silent cinema is “Up”. In its first ten minutes, viewers watch the main character go through the full spectrum of human emotions and outlooks: youthful optimism, dashed hopes, joyful contentment, and resignation to fate.
Perhaps the best-known example of voice-over/narration resulting in an inferior product is “Blade Runner.” The un-narrated version is far more engaging, thanks to the viewer not being spoon-fed what to think about a scene.
I didn’t know John Goodman speaks French.
But not on Shabbat, dude.
The truth is his French is merely passable. It’s his silent French that is remarkably fluent…
Roger Simon: BETTER than “The Iron Lady”? do tell….!
The “tell” in this review is the use of the highfalutin’ term “pure cinema.” It isn’t enough to expect a good movie (which this is certainly not) — it has to be “cinema.” Forget that the story is both dopey and predictable. Forget that the movie illustrates beyond question why silents did not continue to exist alongside talkies, but were replaced by them. The Artist is stultifyingly tedious. And any movie in which the best performance is by a dog is a dog
Sigh. There should be PSA made that makes the point that if you want to be a negative jerk, do so in the quiet of your own home by shouting at the TV or Radio. Please don’t bring your sour view of the world into the public realm by commenting on something you obviously care nothing about, just so you can grind on some axe.
Your parents obviously failed to flip you this little bit of wisdom: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
You wanted a book and got a movie. Due to creative time constraints TV is closer to such considerations and which I have a feeling you enjoy more. Presumably the “French Connection” car chase scene would’ve made more sense without all those pesky edits: maybe one long shot from a blimp.
Pure Cinema is actually the name of a technique and at least one film theory. I don’t use the term for its Latte Society appeal (if it has any at all). Heck, even in film school I never used it or heard it thrown about.
Looks like a slightly re-imagined “Signin’ In The Rain.” Which is not to criticize. “…Rain” was brilliant. Jean Dujardin even looks like Gene Kelly.
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