The Artist
Directed by Michel Hazanavicius
Written by Michel Hazanavicius
Written by Michel Hazanavicius
with Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman
2011
Is Michel Hazanavicius’ clever, modern-day silent film a gorgeous homage to early Hollywood, or a gimmicky exercise in nostalgia? Opening among the studios in the late 20s, The Artistfollows an old-school film icon as he experiences the transition to sound cinema. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a hybrid of Douglas Fairbanks’ adventuring swagger and Rudolph Valentino’s sexy Euro-mystique. Also in the mix is James Cromwell’s faithful valet Clifton, channeling a bit of Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard (although grandfatherly instead of creepy); John Goodman as a blustering studio head; and Bérénice Bejo as a young dancer who gets to live the Hollywood dream, catapulted to stardom through an accidental encounter with the charmed Valentin.
All the highest-profile films released during awards season have at least one showy lead role, and ironically an actor being restricted vocally is a prize instead of a hindrance, if they’re good enough. Jean Dujardin is, and he wonderfully replicates the physicality of the silent film stars without ever reducing Valentin to a caricature. He does get to ham it up in his starring roles within the film, in the manner of an actual silent film star, but also has to give a modern performance of relative restraint, still without the use of his voice. The film is well cast throughout, with all the main roles astutely assigned with an eye towards physical presence rather than mere expressiveness. There’s even a cameo from Malcolm MacDowell, although given his history of mad faces it’s a shame he doesn’t really do anything.
The silent film aesthetic is remarkably sustained, and I suspect how you take it is key to the opening question. Given that it doesn’t add anything concrete to the story I can imagine it seeming to some like a smarter version of ScaryEpicDisaster Movie, just an exercise in various tropes and clichés of the silent era arranged around a charming but simple story. I can understand this point of view, except I think Hazanavicius did it so well that the conceit becomes an evocation of silent Hollywood, instead of just a stylistic quirk. The film isn’t entirely without diegetic sound: it is used in a dream sequence and, in a nice payoff, at the very end, and this thoughtful use of the silent/sound effect to enhance the film saves it, I think, from only being fun.
Comparing it again to the rash of genre-spoof movies that still won’t just stop, the various references throughout The Artist are done with far more subtlety and flair than in those films. You are only reminded of Norma Desmond when you watch Valentin ascending or descending the curved staircase in his home; the film is never so crass as to actually recreate anything. Even the scene where a canine actor (that’s the last time I’ll use that phrase) saves someone from a real-life house fire comes across as pleasingly ironic instead of contrived. Having said that, there’s no way I recognised everything, and given that Hazanavicius probably knows silent cinema inside-out by now, maybe it is just a sequence of references that hardly anyone can actually see.
I always enjoy films where either everyone’s kind of a bad guy or nobody really is, and The Artist falls squarely into the latter category. The main character relives the fate that Fairbanks and many others saw through the advent of sound, at first dismissive, then bewildered and rejected as their voices were found wanting compared with their silent image. Yet although there is a nod to the heartless profit-mechanism at the core of Hollywood, Valentin is always the victim of circumstance rather than betrayal: his producer wants to help him, but is tied by what the public wants, and the girl on the street to whom he gave a break wants nothing more than to repay the debt in kind. All is tied up neatly in a perfect-scenario happy ending, which looks forward to the possibilities of a new era instead of dwelling on the loss of an old one. The cosiness might not be for everyone, but I thought the film worked well, at its most basic level a classic fall-and-redemption story in which the hero recognizes his folly and arrogance, and is rewarded with a second chance.
Tom
Tom
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