Silence is Golden...

Rating: 8/10 (15 January 2012)

The Artist has swept into UK cinemas on a tidal wave of critical acclaim, and a raft of increasingly major awards. Set in the late 1920s, just as the advent of sound overturns the Hollywood status quo, The Artist tracks the pride and fall of George Valentin (Jean DuJardin, best known over here for the OSS 117 espionage parodies) following a chance encounter with Peppy Miller (personified by the delightful Bérénice Bejo).
It's a credit to those involved, particularly writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, that what is in effect one of the oldest tales in Hollywood, spun in everything from Singing in the Rain to Sunset Boulevard, is a beautifully crafted homage rather than the empty, prattling cliché it could so easily have become. DuJardin is terrific as the charming but conceited Valentin, with all the old school grace and swagger of Old Hollywoodland heartthrobs, from Douglas Fairbanks to Rudolph Valentino. By the same token, his co-star Bejo, though slightly sidelined at times, is captivating as the aptly named Peppy, big-eyed and beguiling from start to finish.
Yet it's worth pausing to consider that The Artist is not, strictly speaking, a silent movie - it's actually a movie that happens to be silent, an admittedly specious, but nonetheless important distinction. It's a modern movie shot in black and white with only a single line of dialogue and virtually no sound apart from the musical soundtrack. But silent movies were a distinct genre. The absence of sound and dialogue necessitated a different approach to storytelling, with an emphasis on movement and action, not to mention brevity - the average length of a silent movie in 1910 was about 30 minutes.
By contrast, The Artist is 100 minutes long, positively curt by modern standards. But without the crutch of dialogue to lean on, 100 minutes is perhaps too long in this case. Instead, the audience is virtually required to spend portions of The Artist lip reading during scenes which, had they been cut, would undoubtedly have strengthened as well has shortened the film. Because The Artist works best during the (majority of) scenes that require little or no speaking. Shots of audiences applauding, of Valentin wandering the streets alone, the discovery of an anonymous but humiliating act of charity - all of these moments are as gripping, perhaps more so for not being accompanied by hackneyed dialogue. Bejo and DuJardin excel at pratfalling, their shameless mugging and jazz age japes only serving to highlight the pathos they evoke elsewhere, all the more startling for being totally reliant on their physical performance alone.
What I'm trying to say I suppose is that The Artist is a wonderful movie, but one that perhaps panders to critics and fans of early Hollywood movies a little more than the average modern cinema goer - the final line (spoken out loud), may feel a little anti climactic for some, but it's rich with meaning and Tinseltown history. It's a film that wants to be clever (the much mooted dream sequence) as well as heartwarming (any scene involving James Cromwell's Driver or Valentin's adorably faithful mutt), but occasionally finds it difficult to reconcile the two (the final set of intertitles are the punchline to a joke that feels a little jarring). And yet by the time the final foot has tapped, all such minor (and in the grand scheme of things, they are minor) flaws will be forgiven.
Go because the media has stoked your curiosity, but stay because of the unabashed feelgood factor. If you can escape the relentless buzz around The Artist, it is a gem of a movie that will help you relocate the cockles of your heart.