Black-and-White and Read All Over

The Artist

**1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller and James Cromwell

Running time: 100 minutes

The adage goes, “Silence is golden." Considering the contagious awards-season buzz surrounding The Artist – a darling tribute to the silent era of cinema that is also silent – that saying may ring true come Oscar night.

But take away the illustrious black-and-white sheen, the mugging and mimicry by the lead actors, and the nerve to make a film in 2011 that barely contains an utterance of dialogue, and The Artist is a routine showbiz melodrama that borrows heavily from Singin’ in the Rain and All About Eve.

The film follows George Valentin, a debonair matinee idol in late 1920s Hollywoodland (played by French comedy actor Jean Dujardin). Outside the premiere of his latest swashbuckler, young actress Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) finds herself in Valentin’s limelight when she is pushed into him by a massive throng of fans. The two share a nice moment together, as well as a cheeky kiss that lands Miller’s picture on the front page of Variety.

Plucked from obscurity by the mass publicity, Miller starts getting small roles in grand-scale productions and eventually becomes the toast of the town. She eventually stars opposite Valentin in a light truffle for Kinograph Studios, headed by the business-savvy Al Zimmer (a delightful John Goodman).

Both Miller and Valentin have an obvious chemistry together, but also crave to be recognized as individual successes. This resorts to trouble for our latter screen star when Zimmer demands that the studio start adopting a new format for movies – “talkies” – explaining that “the public wants fresh meat and the public is never wrong.” (Side note: Zimmer would have been wrong in 2011 – the seven highest-grossing films last year were sequels.)

The Artist has ridden a wave of buzz since it premiered at Cannes last May to a rousing ovation, with Dujardin later winning the festival's honour for best Actor. But this noise had more to do with the film's experimentation. Put the audio back in, and The Artist is a second-rate backstage drama with thin characters and obvious symbolism.

Hazanavicius does have fun working around the limitations of the medium, though. In the film’s most arresting scene, the protagonist walks around his dressing room in a shambles, unable to hear himself speak or scream, while other sound effects are added to the atmosphere accordingly, such as a glass landing on a table or a dog barking.

Dujardin is a mighty physical performer in his native France, and is a true find for North American audiences here. With a permanent smile plastered on his face and the dashing matinee idols looks that silent stars like Douglas Fairbanks flaunted to their adoring fans, he is an effective and affecting mimic of a 1920s movie star.

With the majority of the picture being told through facial expression and body language – there are some intertitles, though – Dujardin encompasses a marvellous range as his character's career and personal life gradually implode. An actor of his capability deserved a more refreshing character, though. The relationship between Valentin and his wife, for instance, is hardly explored.

Bejo, Hazanavicius’s real-life wife, is also a pocketful of charm as the burgeoning young actress, while Uggie, a Jack Russell nearly as complex as the one from the 2011 drama Beginners, is a scene-stealer as Valentin’s four-legged friend.

Without a dialogue track, the orchestrations carry much of the film’s dramatic weight. Ludovic Bource provides the original score and it is a frequently gourgeous tribute.

Moving between swanky 1920s jazz to sombre strings in moments of depression (both historically and for the protagonist), and punctuated with twinkly musical cues in-between, Bource’s compositions are sly and affectionate homages.

These technical triumphs aside, the film sometimes takes its experimental gimmick for granted. While spoken dialogue is not an option for the characters, Hazanavicius inserts imagery and symbolism that is too familiar to ensure that the audience can grasp the cues of a changing story. The results are plodding and predictable.

Subtlety is not the film’s strong point. A down-on-his-luck Valentin walks home in the rain as members of the public walk over a poster of his film. Later on, after falling victim to the drink, a drearily dressed Valentin looks at a reflection of himself through a store window, his reflection aligning with a mannequinned tuxedo from inside the store like the one that he wears in the opening scene.

The best silent films, from filmmakers like Charlie Chaplin, F.W. Murnau and Carl Dreyer, were thematically simple and visually striking. But The Artist, for all of its charm and “artistic” ambition, becomes simplistic in its storytelling as it progresses. Hazanavicius’s film handles the tribute to silent black-and-white Hollywood with an original style, but without much originality elsewhere.