- Location: Century Boulder
- The Artist is a largely silent film made over 80 years after silent films went out of vogue. It's completely black and white in an era when color is pretty much a given. It's even shot with a 4:3 aspect ratio that I haven't seen used in any film made in the past 50 years. Like a lot of people, I feared that these filmmaking choices were made exclusively to tap into the seemingly bottomless well of nostalgia for Hollywood's golden age. I'm happy to report instead that The Artist is a film that truly appreciates what Norma Desmond meant when she explained that "We didn't need dialog: We had faces."
- In a movie filled with expressive faces, the most interesting is that of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin). George is one of those classic movie stars whose magnetic personality and easy smile are automatically deployed anytime there's a crowd nearby. Early on, he happily trots out his pet and co-actor Jack the terrier (played by Uggie the terrier) just to get a few laughs at a movie premiere, in the process enraging his human co-star Doris (Penelope Ann Miller), who also happens to be his wife. With that incident in mind, you can imagine how angry Doris gets when she sees a picture of George being embraced by a young upstart actress named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). Well, at least the rest of George's life is a success.
- But that's the George Valentin of 1927. By the time 1929 rolls around, studio moguls like Al Zimmer (John Goodman) are eager to make the transition to sound. George fights back, but his reduced box office draw only makes the trend tougher and tougher to resist. As the stock markets crash, so too do George's fortunes. Doris leaves him just as Peppy Miller becomes the new face that everyone wants to see and, more importantly, hear. It seems like nobody remembers now that it was George who gave Peppy her big break, even inventing that stylish mole that has since become her trademark. Now George's silence reflects only his despondence at being abandoned by everyone except his redoubtable valet Clifton (James Cromwell) and, of course, Jack. Will George find a way to adjust to the modern era, or has all this sound succeeded in drowning him out forever?
- In an era when 3D gimmickry and CGI-laden popcorn films tend to dominate the box office, it's good to see that somebody can still make a great silent film. In fact, director Michel Hazanavicius has, with ample help from the very talented Dujardin and Bejo, created a film that is vastly superior to most of the older silent dramas I've seen (and certainly better than the films-within-a-film that George Valentin starred in). Strangely, my only real complaint about The Artist has to do with its music. Although the film's few bits of sound are generally applied to great effect (or should I say "with pleasure!"), borrowing from Bernard Herrmann's score to Vertigo was a colossal error. It should suffice to say that the inclusion of this music, some of the best and most recognizable ever composed for a film, caused my own face to become very expressive in a way that Hazanavicius surely did not intend. If only The Artist's authenticity had extended to providing no synchronized soundtrack at all, it might have been a perfect silent film.
- But I'm not as upset about the music as Kim Novak, apparently.
- Malcolm McDowell appears briefly as a director.
