Homage to the Image

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2012)

A lovely sparkling film. What goes around comes around - that a French "black & white" "silent" film should be made and feted in 2011 is odd enough, but also that it is so good in all departments too, and with very little recourse to digital cartoonery.
If you know your silent film mythology and well remember films such as A Star Is Born, Singin' In The Rain, Show People, Flesh And The Devil, Citizen Kane amongst many other referenced the story is rigidly straightforward - a big male star struggles to cope with the onslaught of sound films. He starts the slide to the bottle and suicidal thoughts while the acting career of the younger woman who loves him is in the ascendant. But the acting, production and direction are all perfectly in time: the pose struck and the camera movements as starry-eyed Peppy got off the tram; the very close ups of George's expansive smile (based on Gene Kelly's); Astor's – sorry, Uggi's race with a cop down the pavement to save George. In the Golden Age movies like this were churned out by Hollywood studios at dozens per week, it has to be so much more involved and convoluted nowadays. Now nearly everything strives to be Art first then Entertainment but nearly everything fails. My daughter and I watched it expecting to find a few holes somewhere, I couldn't really fault it and the only thing that jarred with her was she thought Berenice Bejo looked too 21st century. Poor old Uggi though – apparently shot dead accidentally near the end by George! Well, did you see him again after the gun went off?
I enjoyed it, as a triumph of discipline – a reminder of how good films (silent or sound) can be whether when they're made without the routine bestiality that's always required nowadays. Based on my extremely limited knowledge of modern movies I would say it deserves to win every award everywhere in 2012 and hope it does for years to come, but whether it deserves all the hype is another matter.