{"id":17370,"date":"2012-01-20T18:52:56","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T02:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=17370"},"modified":"2012-01-20T20:59:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T04:59:32","slug":"the-artist-michel-hazanavicius-2011-francebelgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=17370","title":{"rendered":"The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011): France \/ Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at Paseo Nuevo, Santa Barbara, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 It’s 1927 and\u00a0the year of the talkies;\u00a0a huge event in Hollywood where careers precariously depend on one’s voice.\u00a0 Some film stars\u00a0are able to make this transition easily while others fade into obscurity.<\/p>\n

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is The Artist<\/a><\/em>, a popular silent film star with the charm of Douglas Fairbanks and the elegance of Rudolph Valentino,\u00a0and his\u00a0favorite sidekick is\u00a0a white and brown\u00a0Jack Russell Terrier (Uggie).<\/p>\n

Producer Al Zimmer (John Goodman), cautions George of the encroaching talkie\u00a0dilemma, but he quickly dismisses it.\u00a0 On his current film set\u00a0George connects with a starlet named\u00a0PeppyMiller (Berenice Bejo), but faithfully returns home to Doris (Penelope Ann Miller), his wife of many years.<\/p>\n

Soon talkies become predominant and\u00a0Peppy’s career rises, as George’s popularity plummets.\u00a0 As\u00a0the studio announces the end of production for silents, George decides to\u00a0invest his own money into another production, but the numbers don’t lie and it’s a dismal failure.<\/p>\n

After the stock market crashes the studio abandons him, as well as\u00a0his loyal fans and wife Doris; George\u00a0quickly\u00a0turns to drink when left with only his personal valet Clifton (James Cromwell) and his clever\u00a0little dog.<\/p>\n

Emotionally moving, and at times humorous, The Artist <\/em>is (hands down) the best film I’ve seen of 2011.\u00a0 It is written with the sweet sentimentality of a Chaplin film, with similar style and\u00a0episodic timing , where the\u00a0mood transitions easily from farce to affliction.<\/p>\n

Superbly written by Hazanavicius, who shot the monochromatic film entirely as a silent, save for\u00a0a brief sequence with diegetic sound, he successfully relies on titles cards, wipes, iris-in, iris-out and fades to progress the story.<\/p>\n

Jean Dujardin mimes perfectly through his role as George, with just enough physical gesture to capture the heart of a silent, without looking silly.\u00a0 And while all of the characters\u00a0are well-cast, dog Uggie is the scene stealer throughout.\u00a0 He plays dead (or actually being shot), saves his master, and hides his face, with a quality of acting I’ve not seen since Asta in The Thin Man<\/em> films.<\/p>\n

There is a bit of controversy\u00a0about this film regarding the use of a portion of Bernard Herrmann’s score from Vertigo.\u00a0 <\/em>It\u00a0concerns an ad taken out in Variety, supposedly by Kim Novak,\u00a0the original star of the film.\u00a0 The ad claims foul play on the part of\u00a0The Artist<\/em>\u00a0filmmakers for using Herrmann’s piece to quantify their film.<\/p>\n

Vertigo<\/em> is one of my favorite films of\u00a0Hitchcock, partly due to Herrmann’s fantastic score.\u00a0 I assumed the very distinctive portion through Scotty’s dream sequence was chosen, however the actual piece was more subtle and played for several seconds, before I realized it was the subject that the ad was up in arms about – it’s much ado about nothing!\u00a0 It is quite obvious that\u00a0this portion of the score\u00a0pays homage to Hitchcock and most likely Herrmann, in much the same way that Guy Ritchie uses the theme song\u00a0from Two Mules for Sister Sara <\/em>(1970), though\u00a0less effectively, in Sherlock Holmes:\u00a0 A Game of Shadows<\/em> (2011).<\/p>\n

The Artist<\/em> gets my vote for Best Film, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actor,\u00a0and Best Supporting Actor\u00a0to Uggie, for 2011.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at Paseo Nuevo, Santa Barbara, CA. \u00a0 It’s 1927 and\u00a0the year of the talkies;\u00a0a huge event in Hollywood where careers precariously depend on one’s voice.\u00a0 Some film stars\u00a0are able to make this transition easily while others fade into obscurity. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is The Artist, a popular silent film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-silent-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}