The Artist

The Artist

Can you forget that “The Artist” is a silent film in black and white and just consider it as a movie? No, that’s the thing, isn’t it? People cannot imagine themselves watching such a thing. At a sneak preview screening here, some audience members walked out early, saying they didn’t like silent films. I was reminded of the time an editor called me to ask about an Ingmar Bergman film. “I think it’s the best film of the year,” I said. “Oh,” she said, “that doesn’t sound like anything we’d want to see.”

This is one of the most entertaining films in many a moon, a film that charms because of what it is a story well told; two actors who share rare and surprising chemistry and for being slyly self-aware about its silence and black-and-whiteness. The Artist knows you know it’s silent; it kids you about this fact on multiple occasions. Not that it’s entirely silent, of course; like all silent films were not (silent), it has music throughout. You know like in movies when nobody’s talking?

It may also have been inspired by Singin’ in the Rain (1952), which starred Gene Kelly as an egomaniacal silent star but a nice one, you know?, with Debbie Reynolds as his peppy little love interest a squeaky voiced silent actress whose career collapses with talkies until she finds new success after spoken dialogue makes its exit again from Hollywood Boulevard or wherever people used to go see movies back then? In this case he falls for her instead because she becomes famous thanks to both her voiceover work on radio serials featuring gangsters shooting each other while wearing tutus? Or something along those lines.

Dujardin plays George Valentin, whose French accent sounds just right in Hollywood silent films if you hear what I’m saying get your mind out of the gutter. When the pictures start to speak, though, the industry brushes him aside and he’s left alone in a shabby apartment with only his dog, Uggie, for company.

He’s saved from himself at a crucial moment by Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who when they first met was a hopeful dancer and is now well, very famous. The fans love her little beauty mark; what they don’t know is that he penciled it in with love when she was a nobody.

As was often the case in those days, “The Artist” features actors whose native tongue was not English or French or anything else relevant, because what difference did it make? John Goodman plays a bombastic studio head; James Cromwell is Valentin’s loyal chauffeur/confidant/father figure; Penelope Ann Miller appears all too briefly as his unhappy wife/mother figure/what are you looking at figure; Missi Pyle and Ed Lauter are seen but not heard.

It is a fact that in France, Jean Dujardin is famous at the age of 39. I have watched many of his films where he parodies OSS 117; who is a French secret agent that resembles both James Bond and Inspector Clouseau. His face would have been perfect for silent movies. It is too open and expressive for sound except comedy.

As Norma Desmond says, the proud silent star in “Sunset Boulevard”: “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” And for this movie particularly, his face fits perfectly well my intentions here. He can play subtle as well as broad more than some silent actors, which allows him to handle overwrought melodrama at the end.

I’ve seen “The Artist” three times and each time it was loudly applauded maybe because people were surprised at liking so much what they thought would be a novelty act for holiday time, speaking to all ages in a universal language. Silent films can do a peculiar enchantment. During one good one I fall into that reverie, that all-embracing absorption which drops us out of time.

And I love black and white some people think they don’t like it but they’re wrong about themselves, because B&W (for me) is less realistic than color but more stylized and dreamlike; more concerned with essences than details. Once when giving a speech I was asked by parents what to do about their kids who wouldn’t watch black-and-white: “Do what Bergman’s father did to punish Ingmar,” I said; “put them in dark closet with no light on and hope mice run up their legs.”

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