Film Review: The Artist

30 October 2011 by Dimitri Keramitas    851  
Dimitri Keramitas
By Dimitri Keramitas
  January 15, 2012: The Artist won these Golden Globe Awards: Best Musical or Comedy; Best Musical or Comedy Actor; and Best Musical Score. The Artist: Where’s the Beef? The Artist received a great deal of acclaim at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it picked up a Best Actor Award, and it’s since garnered awards and much attention elsewhere. The movie is a pastiche, a silent film, shot in black and white that looks back at the Silent Film era. The film is French, but was made in Hollywood with a few well-known American and British actors in supporting roles. The most notable performances were played by James Cromwell (Secretariat) as the hero’s faithful chauffeur and John Goodman (Roseanne show) as a gruff producer with a heart of bronze. The crux of the story derives from the poignant myth (with a basis in fact) about silent screen stars who were washed-up when the talkies took over Hollywood. Some charismatic stars turned out to have squeaky voices or bad diction. Others couldn’t make the transition from the mime-like histrionics of the flickers to the more naturalistic acting of the sound era. One of the most famous examples was John Gilbert (1897-1936), the romantic lead who was a top box-office draw until sound drove him to B movies. The Artist is about George Valentin, a screen idol who leads the ultimate charmed life. His movies are huge successes; he’s adulated by the crowds, swooned over by the ladies. The one chink in his celebrity armor is his miserable wife, played by Penelope Ann Miller (Carlito’s Way). The cure for that problem comes in the form of Peppy Miller, a sweet young woman whom he meets by chance and then transforms from an extra into a successful actress. They hit it off during the shooting of a film, especially when trying take after take to make a romantic scene work—when it finally does, we realize it’s not only an on-screen emotion. But nothing comes of this—no romance develops. Instead we get a depiction of Valentin’s downward slide and Peppy’s inevitable rise (another movie-world cliché, incarnated in several versions of A Star Is Born). Jean Dujardin (Best Actor Award, 2011 Cannes Film Festival) is wonderful as George Valentin. He actually bears a superficial resemblance to John Gilbert, but on a deeper level he has both the virile charisma of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and the relaxed charm of his son, Douglas Jr. On the other hand, Bérénice Bejo (Spotlight Award, 2011 Cannes Film Festival) seems out of place as ingénue Peppy. The Argentinian has a dark, Slavic beauty and magnetic screen presence—without indulging in ethno-typecasting, she looks like an actress in search of an adaptation of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. Despite trying hard, she just doesn’t look like a Hollywood starlet of that era, like a Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy or Joan Crawford. The other actors also do a serviceable job, but director Michel Hazanavicius (OSS 117 films) gives the real star performance. He dazzlingly recreates Silent Film-era Hollywood: the studios, the sets, the mansions, the early 20th century California towns. Hazanavicius shoots his silent film in a way that is elegant and subtle, more so than the typical films of the period. (Twenty-first century technology helps). His visual wit sparkles on occasion, especially in his use of Valentin’s little pet dog, though he can be heavy-handed as well (again with that dog).                       The problem is the story: The Artist is all sauce and no meat. The movie moves from insouciant comedy to sentimental pathos and finally to lugubrious self-pity of the most predictable sort. It never surprises us, and in the end barely holds our interest. Moreover, the way The Artist handles the change from silent to sound film doesn’t ring true. Valentin resists sound out of stubbornness or artistic integrity (hence the title). It’s true that visionary, visual directors like D.W. Griffith, F.W. Murnau, and Sergei Eisenstein created an art that didn’t carry over into sound, but this wasn’t so true of actors, constrained by the limits of miming. And Valentin’s silent movies don’t seem particularly visual or visionary—even his botched comeback effort is a hokey jungle movie. Peppy’s rise doesn’t seem genuine, either. She comes across as Greta Garbo in Mary Pickford drag, starring in films just as old-looking as Valentin’s, rather than the gangster films, screwball comedies and horror films that took America by storm. Another great deficiency of the film is that Valentin and Peppy are linked, but don’t have any sort of relationship until practically the end of the film. Before that they don’t seem to be lovers, friends or even colleagues….
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By Dimitri Keramitas

Dimitri Keramitas was born and raised in Connecticut, USA, and was educated at the University of Hartford, Sorbonne, and the University of London, and holds degrees in literature and law. He has lived in Paris for years, and directs a training company and translation agency. In addition, he has worked as a film critic for both print and on-line publications, including Bonjour Paris and France Today. He is a contributing editor to Movies in American History. In addition he is an award-winning writer of fiction, whose stories have been published in many literary journals. He is the director of the creative writing program at WICE, a Paris-based organization. He is also a director at the Paris Alumni Network, an organization linking together several hundred professionals, and is the editor of its newletter. The father of two children, Dimitri not only enjoys Paris living but returning to the US regularly and traveling in Europe and elsewhere.