You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet

Rating: 6/10 (2 May 2014)

In 1927, George Valentin is a big Hollywood star, who by chance meets aspiring actress Peppy Miller. But George's career takes a slump when sound comes in and he refuses to talk, while Peppy's fame is on the rise. Can George overcome his artistic block and pull his life together again ?
This terrific movie, like The Purple Rose Of Cairo or Cinema Paradiso, is a film made out of pure love for cinema itself. It's beguiling, charming, beautifully acted, technically dazzling and an artistic triumph. To my knowledge, Jacques Tati and Mel Brooks are the only filmmakers prior to this with the courage to make a silent film in the sound era, and Hazanavicius joins their illustrious ranks. I love the way the movie plays with its theme - it starts with George in a spy movie being tortured and refusing to talk, it's replete with signs requesting silence, and George's creative slump is literally made manifest by noise. This is a beautiful idea - if only the great silent stars like Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford and Rudolf Valentino could have seen it. The recreation of the period and more importantly the style of the silent era is bang on; it was shot in the 4:3 ratio and at a lower frame-rate, deliberately replicating only camera moves available at the time, and it looks gorgeous. Dujardin and Bejo are excellent in the leads, expressing everything using only their physicality - the purest of acting - and the excellent support cast look perfect, notably the scene-stealing performance from Uggie the Jack Russell Terrier, who won the prestigious Palm Dog award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The other key aspect of the film is Ludovic Bource's truly inspired score, which uses woodwind and percussion in particular to complement the action, provide emotional gravitas and recreate the period in equal measure with seemingly effortless ease, amusingly comical one moment, romantic and languorous the next. If I have one mild criticism of the movie it's the decision to use Bernard Herrmann's Scene D'Amour theme from Vertigo as the accompaniment to the dramatic penultimate sequence. The music fits perfectly and the scene is beautiful, but the deliberate inclusion of such a classic piece of movie music is perhaps too much of a distraction in a film where the rest of the original score is so strong. I like silent films; I respond to their purity, and I love sound movies like C'era Una Volta Il West or Wall-E which recognise that you can create so much more without dialogue. The Artist is a cool, classy, funny, touching and hugely enjoyable modern silent movie.