A glorious look back to old Hollywood

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2012)

Anyone who loves cinema will love 'The Artist'; a gem of a film that harks back to the early days of Hollywood. Fitting then that a Frenchman should have made it since the Lumiere brothers are credited with the world's first public film screening on 28 December 1895. Judging by this film, it appears that the heart and soul of cinema still reside with the French, a medium that has always been viewed as high art and culture in France and much respected and patronised by all sections of French society. You only have to look at the flourishing film industry in France to realise this, something that the British government can learn lessons from in developing the British film industry.
The story is simplicity itself charting the fall of a great silent film star to be replaced by a young Hollywood starlet who embraces the 'talkies' as the future of film. It's a feel good movie, a history of Hollywood and a love story all rolled into one. All films should be made like this with an involving storyline, characters you care about and a feeling of happiness at the end. Both the costumes and the music complete its throwback to 1930s Hollywood glamour. The film will surely be played in cinemas with a live orchestral accompaniment and this will be a sublime experience indeed.
The French leads, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, have the look of 1920s Hollywood film stars and resemblances to Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow are not accidental (Dujardin's plays George Valentin, but there is also a heavy Fred Astaire/Gene Kelly vibe, as the ending of the film makes clear). Bejo's character, Peppy Miller, also echoes the youthful vibrancy and age of Hollywood at its height. The film and its stars have already garnered many critical awards at film festivals around the world and I am sure will be favourite to win at the Oscars. It will, however, be impossible to separate Dujardin's performance from Bejo's and both should win the main acting prizes along with Best Film, Best Director and Best Music. The film will bewitch the voters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences because it is a warm, nostalgic reminder about the Hollywood of its youth – an age in which cinema was tightly entwined in the zeitgeist of its time where anything was possible, no less the American Dream.