The Artist (2011)

The first silent feature to win the Academy Award for Best Picture since the 1927 film Wings (though at the time the award was called Outstandng Feature), The Artist is an homage to that transitional period in Hollywood between silent and talking pictures. In fact most of the film is silent, with only two sequences featuring sound (save score), and only one with any dialogue. Jean Dujardin (this years upset win for best actor) plays George Valentin, a fictional movie star of the leading man variety, who at the beginning of the film is on the top of world and loving it. While leaving the primer of his newest film (amusingly an adventure story about Georgian resistance to Soviet domination), Valentin almost literally bumps into a young fan (Berenice Bejo, who has a beautiful silent-era type face). The two are photographed together with Bejo's Peppy Miller (great period style Hollywood name), briefly becoming the subject of media speculation (Who's That Girl?, screams Variety, over a photo of the two outside the premier), all of this to the consternation of Valentin's emotionally distant wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller).

Peppy Miller of course is an aspiring actress, and when she shows up at Valentin's home studio (Kinograph Studios, another great period name) looking for extra work, George saves her from studio head Al Zimmer's (John Goodman) effort to have her kicked of the premises. She gets a small role in one of Valentin's films, and their chemistry and romantic attraction is clearly evident. Later Valentin, in an effort to provide guidance to the young would-be starlet, uses makeup to add a beauty mark to her face, giving her a signature look, the two reluctantly part ways.

Then the talkies come. Miller enjoys a quick rise to stardom, her looks, playfulness, and winning personality endearing her to audiences, and even to Al Zimmer who signs her. Valentin on the other hand refuses to make a talking a picture (I don't why, but he dose) and instead chooses to invest much of his own money in a epic about a pith helmeted jungle explorer (shades of Clara Bow's Call Her Savage). His movie of course is a flop, and then the stock market crashs wipping out most of Valentins remaining assets. His wife leaves him, and Valentin is forced to move into a small apartment and sell most of his personal belongings (secretly purchased by still love struck, and very much successful Peppy Miller).

Valentin turns to drink, reluctantly fires his faithful valet Clifton (James Cromwell), and is left alone with his also faithful dog and once frequent costar Uggie (a talented Terrier). In a drunken rage Valentin sets to fire his collection of his old films, he is saved from suffocation and flam by the aid of Uggie and a policeman. Peppy comes to Valentin's aid putting him up in her mansion to recover, but the prideful George stubbornly refuses her offer to get him another film role, and so sneaks out of the mansion on a mission to finish what the fire started. As Peppy rushes to his rescue it is only their love that can save him.

Basically this is A Star is Born, only with a happier ending. The limitations of the film are built into its very concept, if it doesn't tell you anything new (much of this subject matter was covered in Singing In the Rain, from which this film freely borrows),  it's not suppose too. It's meant to invoke an earlier era, the tropes, style, and dare I say sincerity of a type of film made in the past. One of the things that I loved about the film was its use of 'faces', those distinctive looking character actors of another time are here evocked by there modern day counter parts, the likes of John Goodman, James Cromwell, Malcom McDowell, Beth Grant, and Ezra Buzzington, all that's missing is William H. Macey. The scene in the studio stairwell could well have come from King Vidor, or even Buster Keyton. The backlot city streets are just the type of backlot city streets to remiand you that you love backlot city streets The Artist is a supremely pleasant, warm, and nostalgic production. I don't know if it's truly the best picture of the year, but its surely one of its best cinematic experiences.

Great