August 31st, 2011 at 10:00 am by
Sheri

Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist was the toast of the Croisette at this year’s Cannes Film Festival Its star, Jean Dujardin, won the award for Best Actor and the film was snapped up by Harvey and The Weinstein Company tout de suite. It’s essentially a story along the lines of any of the incarnations of A Star Is Born, but the hook is that its a silent movie. That’s right, someone made a silent movie in the second decade of the 21st century and the industry is bonkers for it. After Cannes it played the Moscow Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival. It will play Toronto before its release in France on 12 October and in the US on November 23. No UK date has been set.
The official synopsis: Hollywood, 1927: As successful silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break and for whom sky’s the limit. Dujardin looks like Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (you all know who that is right? *face palm* okay, there are photos down below.) and Argentinian actress Berenice Bejo looks like a young Joan Crawford (who did start out as a hoofer. You do know who Joan Crawford is right?).
Dujardin is French, Bejo speaks Spanish and a lot of the rest of the cast (including John Goodman, James Cromwell, Beth Grant, Missi Pyle, Joel Murray, Ed Lauter, Penelope Ann Miller) are Americans. That’s the beauty of a silent film, just as it was when the world first fell in love with them. There are no language barriers and no one’s accent gets in the way and jerks you out of the moment. I’m curious about the soundtrack, wondering if they used classic jazz like that in the trailer (although to be honest, “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman is the wrong era.) Ludovic Bource is credited with the score. He scored Michel Hazanavicius’ two previous films: OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies andOSS 117 – Lost in Rio.
This looks like a beautifully crafted love letter to the movies, designed to remind us all why we first fell in love with them all those years ago. There is, understandably after its reception at Cannes, a lot of awards buzz surrounding this film already. Hopefully without sounding sacrilegious, I’m reserving judgement for now. It may just be a pretty oddity. I will definitely be seeing it to find out.
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