The Artist takes place in a world reeling from the effects of an economic crisis. Businesses go bust. Protesters are on the streets. In America, the polls slide for a president sworn in on the crest of a landslide victory a few years ago. In the UK, an unpopular coalition formed in ‘the national interest’ clings to power. Radical politics are in. In the arts, a technological advance is sold as a leap forward for filmgoers, though many are sceptical. Meanwhile, City of Lights, the new Charlie Chaplin film, is released to universal acclaim. The year is 1931.
Back in 2011 – whisper it – a silent film is being backed for Oscar glory. The Artist is your simple riches-to-rags-to-riches-cum-love-story. It’s also a funny and reverent ode to the golden age of Hollywood – a period made famous by Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Buster Keaton – that disregards the gloom of the 30s for a little romance. The film doesn’t trade in the sweeping literary tropes that usually serve as Oscar bait, but it does feel familiar. And it is very, very good.
George Valentin – an uncanny synthesis of Cary Grant and Clark Gable played by Jean Dujardin – is the preeminent leading man of the silent movie era. At the height of his powers, he glides effortlessly through the silvery calm of the first half-hour, and his fame is such that a chance encounter with a starry-eyed film fan sparks talk of a romance and makes her the talk of Hollywood. The talkies arrive and Valentin is dismissive, arrogant. ‘If that’s your future, you can keep it!’ he guffaws (well, it looks like he guffaws) in the same way cineastes laugh at the latest 3D film. Later, the march of technology creeps into the film. Peppy Miller, the starry-eyed film fan played by Bérénice Bejo, is now the poster girl of the talkies. In another scene a nightmare of diegetic sound terrorises Valentin in his sleep; clanking whiskey glasses and the steady hiss of distant traffic replaces Ludovic Bource’s pleasant and illustrative soundtrack. Talkies haunt Valentin and the film itself.
In the same way that children presume – and romantically minded directors pretend – that the past must have really been in black and white, The Artist expands technological limitations into a way of living. In an interview with the New York Times, Director Michel Hazanavicius outlined the philosophy. ‘It is a kind of a utopia, not having a language’. The world before talkies didn’t just have silent movies, it was silent. The film’s cast don’t mug to the camera (much) in a way that acknowledges an audience. Characters don’t talk, but they do communicate. At his raggiest point, a woman approaches Valentin about his dog (a Jack Russell, the star of the show). ‘If only he could talk,’ he sighs. It’s not just a swipe at talkie films, but reflects his wider obsolescence. The jump between the silent age and the talkies isn’t just about a technological upgrade, but a change of values. Talkies bring dialogue, and noise.
It’s been 81 years since a silent movie received an Oscar nod and what makes the movie’s buzz all the more remarkable is that it’s a funny movie. As well as a sincere homage to Hollywood, The Artist is a film that pastiches the limitations of the silent film’s form. Early on Valentin waits tentatively for applause at the end of a showing of his latest film. The film ends and the shot frames itself on his face. There’s an anxious pause (not silence, obviously) and then, yes, Dujardin nods appreciatively and smiles. They’re clapping? We soon get an answer; the shot switches to the audience who are giving a rowdy standing ovation. In another scene, Valentin’s much-neglected wife (he prefers the dog) expresses her frustration not in an argument but in defacing his image wherever she finds it. Their home gradually fills with images of Valentin sporting graffitied glasses and moustaches.
Choices like that would deflate the dramatic seriousness of lesser films, but The Artist accomplishes the trick of being very funny and very affecting. Critics will point to Hazanavicius’ pedigree of spy movie parodies and claim that The Artist, beyond its arthouse-baiting qualities, is just a variation on that theme. But it walks the line between irreverent pastiche and cloying homage with grace. There are plenty of self-aware jokes, but the film also has an obvious affection for a time before irony, and sticks to many of the conventions of the era in a way that only a sincere, keen-eyed fan would appreciate. Beyond its immaculate period details, the film abides by the morally conservative Hays Code. Though a love story, Valentin and Miller never share physical contact or kiss, and there are definitely no cigarettes in bed or visual metaphors involving firework displays or trains entering tunnels. A grin-inducing tap dance scene is as close to a sex scene as we get, and it doesn’t feel parental or prudish, just right.
The Artist has picked a good moment to argue for a levelling of the silent and talkie film. It’s easy to imagine the form being seen as providing a unique quality in spite of its limitations in the same way vinyl is now appreciated. In the same NYT interview Hazanavicius philosophised that ‘there is something very sensual about the silence; it can say a lot of things.’ The film plays a lot of roles: it’s a sincere homage, playful pastiche, grand love story (and riches-to-rags-to-riches tale). It might not do much with the echoes of 1931, it’s not the stirring epic usually favoured by the Oscar but, in spite of its muteness, it communicates a lot if you take the time to listen. When The Artist manages to be sharper than most Hollywood talkies, it’s necessary to remind yourself why films bother with the hassle of language. Maybe the talkies really are just a passing fad.
