Silence is golden

Bagging many of the top awards going (Oscars, BAFTAs, Césars, The Artist finally made a reappearance at my local cinema after a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run earlier this year (though curiously a sister branch in Maidstone was running it every weekday).  It is a cinéaste’s treat, not just in tribute to the silent era but also to Orson Welles, with action taking place inside a single frame at a time instead of the camera following the subject about (or even moving), Great Garbo, Sunset Boulevard, even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where his placing of the glass is as jarring to George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) as the stamping clerk in the Venetian library.  Most pointedly, the male protagonist’s name evokes Rudolf Valentino and his film action is akin to that of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.

That reference to the clinking glass is an indication that the film is not entirely silent.  When Jean Dujardin accepted his Best Actor Oscar, he said, “If George Valentin could speak, he would say, ‘I love you all very much.’” Thus, I was intrigued to see if we would hear his voice or not, especially as we moved deep into the 1930s.  I won’t give that away though.

The acting is delivered with chutzpah and completely wins you over.  You forget nationalities - Dujardin being French, actress Bérénice Bejo – the wife of director Michel Hazanavicius – being Argentinean, Malcolm McDowell being English and the rest of the cast essentially American.  This is one of the beauties of the silent period, that such distinguishing distractions like accents are dissolved and replaced with the acting on the screen.  The intelligent use of the inter-titles (a brilliant conceit, largely allowing for a roll-out across the world, with little need for extraneous subtitles) makes us concentrate on the features of the company present to discern emotion and thrust.  The script is obviously in English, as we can tell by the movement of the lips.  John Goodman is a Louis B. Mayer studio boss (here Arnold Zimmerman) and James Cromwell makes his usual outstanding contribution, as a loyal and self-effacing chauffeur, first to Valentin, then to Peppy Miller (Bejo).  The dog Uggy is wonderful and makes the film that bit more lighter.

Starting off in 1927, there are the historical quirks that the film likes to reference, with the sign Hollywoodland still present before it was decided to abbreviate it.  The sets are adorable really capturing the era, not just of the time, but of the style of movie-making as well.  The deployment of music is both post-modern and classic.

The story turns on how hard it was for a lot of silent actors to adapt to the ‘talkies’, often émigrés from persecution or poverty in Europe, their voices were hard to understand on the screen.  Men of action were rendered impotent in their subsequent box office by their squeaky voices.  The plot has fantastical scenes and serves as a meta-drama for Valentin’s own struggles to adapt.  Stairs are a key part of this, people on the way up meeting others on the way down, both in actuality and in the direction of their lives.

I doubt the movie will be greeted so warmly in the Kremlin.  A flick for Valentin ends with his spy character flying off in to the sunset, exulting in ‘free Georgia’.  Given that we then find out the motion picture is called A Russian Affair, it is obvious that the ‘Georgia’ in question is the Caucasian country, not the US state, making a sly dig at Russian policy towards Georgia.  The follow-up is A German Affair.  This is reminiscent of the work that Dujardin and Hazanavicius did together on the OSS series – the French version of James Bond, although The Artist is not strictly historical as From Russia With Love was (coincidentally) the first true movie sequel.

If there has to be a criticism, it is that some metaphors are rather transparent.  In the silent film he bankrolls himself after the studio refuses to get involved, Valentin sinks into the quicksand as it bombs with audiences.  Then a flyer with his beaming face that lies disconsolately on the ground gets casually walked on all over (this will resonate tremendously in the Arab world, where this action has been an insult for millennia).  As his fortune is wiped out in the Wall Street Crash, there is an absolute deluge from the sky (was it really raining in that part of California, the day after the Crash?  Something for the bloopers committee to investigate).  With his possessions auctioned off, he strolls morosely, a cinema front billing A Lonely Star.  When he burns projectionist reels in his own home, this act of self-destruction is depicted with him standing as consumed by the flames too.

It is a minor quibble in an outstanding work of art, that contains both pathos and humour in the story of our age, how to be relevant when technology is improving so quickly.  The end of the printed edition of Britannica Encyclopaedia, to become purely a digital resource, illustrates that.  No matter what changes though, The Artist will remain a sublime delight down the years.