A Formidable Task

Rating: Null/10 (23 March 2012)

Even the most lavish aristocratic banquet or the excessive intake of special drinks of variable alcohol content in any decadent soirée would not have caused this Herr Graf to imagine that, during the first decade of the XXI century, silent films would come back in fashion after having vanished almost 100 years before.
"The Artist" (2011) is the picture in question and Herr Michel Hazanavicius the director; a silent film that has won considerable success with the public and the critics all around the world. Amazing that in these modernen times with its endless procession of noisy gadgetry that such a film has achieved vast approval. And if we add that "The Artist" is a French production concerned with how the coming of sound affected many actors, namely "American" actors, then this Her Graf doesn't understand a word, although probably the reason of this was that the film in question has French intertitles
However, while this Herr Graf was watching "The Artist" at the Schloss theatre, he felt something very strange in his stiff heart, a turmoil of different and contradictory feelings that gave him a particular sensation or as French commoners said, a "déjà vu".
This German count does not, in any way, want to lecture or to rant about the tricky aspects of a film such as "The Artist" or what is supposed to be the quintessence of a silent film, and how this particular vision is almost a parody of its subject and uses many stereotypes about the era. Rather, since the film is celebrating silent movies, this Herr von can only applaud Herr Hazanavicius. He accomplished a formidable task given that most people today have never even seen a silent film or even one in black and white. He had to approximate a silent film in a rather cliché' way in terms of story and the style is more like a talkie than a silent but this had to be done to overcome the prejudices of modernen audiences.
So, consequently the fact that a "new" silent film like the "The Artist" has been given the support and approval of the public is fit sociological subject. Will this lead to the new longhaired generations appreciating silent film? If that does happen it will be the most incredible and shocking news to this Herr Graf since his fat and rich Teutonic heiresses decided to get rid of their corsets.
And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must put on again his old but now fashionable tuxedo.