Silent vs Sound

Rating: 8/10 (12 March 2015)

This movie is a masterpiece by itself portraying a very critical time for movies and the American society – The end of silent movies and the market crash of 1929 hence the beginning of the Great Depression.
Silent movies were very big in those days but the arrival of sound posed some complicated challenges to the actors. The film bosses and the public wanted for something new and silent movies were abandoned in a dramatic way.
Silent movie actors didn't have to memorize lines, they "just" had to mimic the feelings of the script by gestures and faces. This by itself wasn't easy but sound was another matter. Besides script memorizing they had to use their voices, which in some cases were not the best solutions for the movie.
The image of the actor and its expressions were not enough anymore. This meant that the grand majority of the silent movie actor weren't able to make the transition between silent and sound. And this is the story of George Valentin in a great performance by Jean Dujardin, assisted brilliantly by the always trying to help Peppy Miller – Berenice Bejo.
In a time of sound, image, CGI, green screens, and all the movie trickery that we grow accustomed to, this is a breath of fresh air. It helps us, movie lovers, to appreciate good cinema, the classics.
It is important to look forward in a quest for new and innovative solutions, different ways to tell a story, but in order to do so with a consistent base of knowledge, we should not forget the classics, and this is a perfect and modern representation of a classic.
We should know the past in order to understand the future.