The Count of Monte Cristo meets The Little Rascals meets A Star is Born meets Sunset Boulevard meets Citizen Kane

Rating: 4/10 (5 February 2012)

The Weinstein Brothers strike again by bringing French director Michael Hazanavicius' silent film tribute, 'The Artist', to the United States, now in the running for possible Oscar Gold. To my recollection, silent films wore out their welcome way back in 1927, and only something strikingly original, should be considered for the Academy's highest honor. While Hazanavicius does his best at technically putting together the kind of film they made in the silent era (and he certainly doesn't get 'everything' right), story wise, his narrative is completely derivative. There's nary a single original idea in the entire picture.
Hazanavicius' protagonist is George Valentin, obviously named after silent screen legend himself, Rudolph Valentino. Valentin's character, a heartthrob before the advent of the talkies, is modeled historically more on silent screen star, John Gilbert, than Valentino. After the introduction of the talkies, Gilbert's career fell apart, not because the sound of his voice didn't sit well with audiences now accustomed to 'talking pictures', but because he was saddled with inferior scripts and the one or two good pictures he was in, did not find wide favor with the public. Like Valentin in 'The Artist', Gilbert also proceeded to self-destruct by embracing the bottle.
The Artist's narrative is based both on films from the silent era as well some classic sound pictures. 'The Count of Monte Cristo', one of Gilbert's well-known silent era films as well as Douglas Fairbanks' 'The Three Musketeers" are alluded to when Valentin is seen in one of the 'pictures within a picture', playing an action hero swordsman. Silent era melodrama is also referenced when Valentin's dog, Jack, alerts a policeman on the beat, who runs into the fading screen star's home, and saves him from a raging fire. I can't help being reminded of the early sound serial, 'The Little Rascals', where dogs are used to a more comic effect. Early in 'The Artist', Jack is featured in an amusing bit, running to and fro, on stage.
While there are many allusions to actual silent films and very early talkies in 'The Artist', the basic plot is derived from two later classic 'sound' films. In 'The Artist', Valentin, a once successful actor, now in sad decline after a successful career, finds himself supplanted by a love interest, who has gone on to a successful career of her own as a celebrity actor, but offers to rescue him out of both feelings of love and guilt. This in essence is the story of 'A Star Is Born', made in the 30s and later revived in the 50s, as a Judy Garland vehicle. One also cannot ignore the parallels to 'Sunset Boulevard', which features a story that in part revolves around the movie studio system. 'The Artist' even has its own chauffeur, Clifton, played by James Cromwell, that echos the chauffeur role in 'Sunset Boulevard', famously played by Erich Von Stroheim. Should I also mention how Mr. Hazanavicius can't help himself throw in a bit from 'Citizen Kane'? When Valentin uncovers all his auctioned effects which Peppy had purchased for him, it's a scene completely reminiscent from 'Citizen Kane', where all of Kane's property sits in storage, covered by similar white cloths. And what of Hazanavicius' lazy use of music composed by Bernard Hermann, associated with both Orson Welles and Hitchcock? It seems that Ludovic Bource simply ran out of ideas and perhaps was unable to complete the score. A more likely scenario is that Hazanavicius simply wanted to save money by licensing Hermann's Hitchcock soundtrack.
There is little point in rehashing the details of Hazanvicius' derivative and pointless plot. Suffice it to say, it's Valentin who ironically discovers kindly Peppy Martin, after she accidentally crashes through a roped off area of Valentin groupies, and is photographed by paparazzi. After sad sack Valentin feels sorry for himself after falling from grace as a silent screen star and Peppy becomes famous in the talkies, he takes to the bottle and is about to kill himself. Leave it to Jack to save him along with Peppy, who recalls that Valentin is actually a talented dancer, and suggests to the Kinograph studio honcho, that they could make a great pair, as the next Rogers and Astaire-like dance team.
If 'The Artist' has any value, is in its fairly faithful recreation of a bygone era. It's fun watching how director Hazanavicius utilizes the costumes, makeup and set design, as well as the many techniques of silent film era cinematography to create the final product, which best can be described as a 'loving tribute'. Nonetheless, Hazanavicius has chosen merely to emulate the traditional conventions of the silent film era than create an original, final product. One is reminded more of a 'B' melodrama from that era than one of the classics, such as the kind proffered up by a Chaplin or Keaton.
It's a sad state of affairs when a less than mediocre story, created in a now defunct style of filmmaking (which was put to rest over seventy years ago), garners some of the top awards from the chief pundits in today's film industry. It only goes to show how hard up the film industry is, in its ability to discover and promote quality scripts, instead resorting to the dubious tactic of reaching back to yesteryear, for ill-advised inspiration.