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Christmas Day
A film, Michel Hazanavicius, where you do not hear the dialogue is only incidentally, not truly, a silent film : The Artist (2011).
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 26, 2013It never felt like a silent film, except (as Hitchcock might) drawing attention - in a patent dream-sequence or a waking nightmare of mouths - to sound or its absence. Otherwise, largely uninterestingly shot, and with an effect of black and white that drifted in and out of sepia all the time, it was paper thin in trying to locate a plot in the five years from 1927 on.
This is essentially a palpably hollow rags-to-riches story and vice versa intermingled, and coupled with some inadequately explained fascination of Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) for George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and, on some level, of his for her. Pride, grand gestures better made in Sunset Boulevard (1950), and a descent into the abyss portrayed there far more effectively conclude the armoury of Hazanavicius' screenplay and direction.
If, as some want to say (as they want to say about what I find the wasteland of Holy Motors (2012), rather than a witty, comprehensive library of reference), this film is a tribute to what some call 'the silent era', this very paucity of living material actually insults the memory of those who worked at that time : compare, say, the richness of meaning in Anthony Asquith's Underground (1928) with the ridiculous scene where Valentin has to pull off every dust-sheet to realize that he has been living on charity, with tempestuously Herrmannesque scoring, which maybe makes using the 'Love Scene' music from his score for Vertigo (1958) seem almost inevitable, but never right :
Now having watched The Artist (2011), which was carefully avoided at the time, @THEAGENTAPSLEY agrees with Kim Novak: http://t.co/n2aiA5YUDn
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 25, 2013Maybe there is more to say, but not now...
These reviews, via www.rottentomatoes.com, make for interesting reading :
Jeffrey Overstreet, Filmwell
Ron Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
Thirty months on, a postlude :
Watched the first ep of #StrangerThings. Didn't think that much to it. Think I'd rather watch actual 80s movies.— Ryd Cook (@RydCook) August 1, 2016
An equivalent truth may hold for The Artist (2011) [and the theme from Vertigo (1958)], @RydCook ? ;) https://t.co/9wAtIe46KO
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2016
Not really sure that that is so, @RydCook : reading about Mary Pickford at that time made far more of a valid impression on me ?— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2016
@THEAGENTAPSLEY I liked The Artist. It's in the style of a silent movie while at the same time also being about the story of silent to sound— Ryd Cook (@RydCook) August 1, 2016
It *was promoted* as both of those things :— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 2, 2016
The Artist (2011) is without audible speech, but is not a silent film ? https://t.co/InDZpVk8D4
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
