A simple, charming film that deserves the praise it gets

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2018)

I would love to see a transcript of the pitch meeting for The Artist. A silent film, you say? Why? We have digital cameras and CGI and 3D and this and that nowadays. Why would you want to downgrade the technology?
The thing is, people were entertained by silent films in the 1920s. Children today are still entertained by films from the early era of colour like The Wizard of Oz and Snow White. Star Wars is forty years old and still entertaining. It's A Wonderful Life remains a Christmas staple.
Good stories are good stories irrespective of the technology used. Good film-making will always be god film-making. We rightly praise the special effects-heavy blockbusters like Star Wars for being visual spectacles, but silent films like Metropolis have effects and visuals that hold up today: George Lucas was not alone in borrowing plenty of imagery from Fritz Lang's masterpiece.
So now The Artist. A modern silent film. It's unashamedly a homage to film history. While it shuns dialogue, it has been updated for modern tastes with panning camera shots and tracking shots (things rare in true classic silent films), relatively short scenes and plenty of title cards. It's edited largely like a modern film to keep the pacing and conventions that we are used to.
The plot is simple: a egotistical silent film star falls on hard times as the talkies become popular while a young actress rises in fame. If that sounds like Singing in the Rain then you're right: it is. There's nothing to 'get' about The Artist. It's a simple, undemanding plot. It's not pretentious.
There's nothing really not to like here. The acting is superb, featuring the talents of John Goodman, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, among others. The casting is perfect: you can fully believe that these are people fresh from the 1920s. The film is beautifully directed and nicely paced. The soundtrack is wonderful: a nice combination of a original score by Ludovic Bource and period pieces. The set design demonstrates a real attention to detail (and while a few anachronisms a present, unless you're an expert or overly pedantic you won't notice).
Silent films are pure pieces of film-making. 'Film' ultimately consists of a string of still photographs produced by the interaction between light and chemicals contained on, y'know, camera film. This is what it is: moving images - movies. The audio came later. Being able to appreciate silent cinema is being able to appreciate the most pure form of film.
It's widely noted that nowadays people's concentration spans are shorter. Classic silent films are often extremely long with long drawn-out shots where relatively little happens, something modern films would edit out or replace with a throwaway line in a few seconds. The Artist does dispense with a lot of this to cater to modern tastes, but even so, a lot of modern viewers will be urging the film to get a move on.
To those people I say: calm down and take the opportunity to fully watch the film. Look at the actors' gestures and expressions, note what's going on in the background and just enjoy the music accompanying the visuals. You can't do this in most modern films - they just move too quickly. People enjoyed these films a hundred years ago and there's no reason we can't enjoy them now.