The Artist
DIRECTED BY MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS
Arriving hot on the heels of Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s paean to a pioneering cinematic magician, The Artist sees French director Michel Hazanavicius pay similarly reverential homage to Hollywood’s silent heyday. Where Scorsese’s didactic ode embraces all the bells and whistles of digital 3D, however, The Artist is a remarkable celebration of silent cinema in content as well as form (certain inspired aural liberties notwithstanding). Scrupulously detailed (down to its 1.33 aspect ratio), and as lavishly mounted as any ’20s epic, Hazanavicius crafts a ceaselessly charming marvel of gesture and spectacle, charting Tinseltown’s seminal transition to the talking picture era.
His regular collaborator and Cannes Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin dazzles as the strapping, Fairbanks-inspired George Valentin, a silent film megastar undone by hubris and a disdain for synchronized sound. Opposite, Bérénice Bejo is every bit as enchanting as Peppy Miller, the fresh face who earns her big break thanks partly to Valentin, and who proceeds to become a leading light of the talkie revolution. And nearly overshadowing both is Uggie, the absurdly lovable terrier who plays Valentin’s fearless canine sidekick, winner of both the Palm Dog at Cannes and Torontoist‘s coveted award for Breakout Pet Performance at TIFF. Together, the trio turn in three of the year’s most compelling performances, essentially without uttering a word—all in a day’s work for Uggie, but no mean feat for his human co-stars.
Plot-wise, Hazanavicius cribs most apparently from Singin’ in the Rain and A Star is Born, but fashions an almost proto-Tarantinoesque pastiche of nods to pre-Code Hollywood and early mid-century landmarks. The results are both wittily inventive and warmly familiar—The Artist trades in the sorts of tropes that audiences absorb by cultural osmosis as much as through direct exposure to its various points of reference. As a film that simultaneously pays tribute to a bygone artform while demonstrating its enduring viability, The Artist succeeds to an improbable degree. Postdating popular silent cinema by nearly a century, Hazanavicius gives new meaning to the notion of a late-period classic.