A triumph that may never be replicated

Rating: Null/10 (29 January 2012)

This is an audaciously original movie that succeeds spectacularly but it is hard to see how such success could ever be replicated. In the age of American widescreen blockbusters with glorious colour, crashing sound. sharp dialogue, and computer- generated special effects, who would have expected the creation of, let alone the acclaim for, a Franco-Belgian 1.33:1 aspect ratio, black and white work with (virtually) no sound and only old-fashioned visual effects?
Above all, this is a triumph for writer and director Michel Hazanavicius. Much of Hazanavicius' television and film work is a pastiche of earlier cinema and "The Artist"is a homage to a past era. It is set in Hollywood at the time that silent movies were being being surpassed by the talkies, a transition that ruins the previously-feted eponymous, handsome George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) but plays to the strengths of the winsome newcomer Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo, the director's wife). In France, Dujardin is something of a national treasure but, until now, he has been largely unknown outside his Gallic homeland. The two French leading roles are supplemented by those of two familiar American actors, James Cromwell as chauffeur to Valentin and then Miller and John Goodman as director of both. But the fifth star of this most unusual work is a talented canine who gives us the biggest laughs: a Jack Russell terrier named Uggie.
Those who know their cinematic history will delight in the many cultural references, perhaps above all to John Gilbert who failed to make the transfer from silents to talkies. Those who have longed for a movie with a plot that one can understand, despaired at trying to catch snatched lines of dialogue, and feared that too much contemporary cinema is callous and cynical will thrill to a simple and humanist work which has its share of pathos but leaves you with a huge smile on your face.