Film Review - The Artist

The Artist (2011)

Director:

 Michel Hazanavicius

Writer:

 Michel Hazanavicius

Stars:

 Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman 

PLOT:

The story was started in the year of 1927, when the film star of silent movies George Valentin was at the premiere day of his new film, which was called “Russian Business”. As a star, he had to be near the entrance with the public to give some autographs to his fans and during that time he unconsciously punched a young woman, Peppy Miller and the next day the photo with these two people being closely together was posted on the pages of Varity magazine. Soon after that , Miller came on the casting of a new movie as a professional dancer and our main hero George forced filming crew to hire this girl as an actress. Depsite El Zimmer’s angry words, the girl was hired and her role was successful and after that her career had made a huge leap. The time has passed and the era of silent films was at the edge of extinction , but despite that Valentin was confident in the thought of last silent film creating and production and so he decided to make the film. The premiere date was similar to his friend’s Miller first sound film appearance.  George was under great pressure and his material status was destructed and moreover his lovely wife Doris made him to escape from the home and to accept her divorce rules. Valentin went to a poor flat to his friend-valet Clifton. In order to be financially stable he had to sell all his personal items and to eliminate Clifton. His cruel wife had an attempt to burn out his photographic films at their own house, and the house was surrounded by the fire , but George’s dog helped his master to save, loudly barking near the building. Peppy Miller  knew, that George was at the hospital with some light burns and she decided to take his back to her house and support his for a little. After some time , his health was raised on the common level and Peppy gave him a scenario of a new sound film and wanted him to play with her, but the director Zimmer was absolutely against that idea, thinking , that Valentin was the man of mediocrity. But Peppy started to blackmail famous director and he finally said his words of acceptance. Poor man George had lost all his life opportunites and decided to commit a suicide, but Peppy rapidly punch out the revolver out of his hands. Peppy could persuade Valentin to dance in a new musical film of Zimmer, and their dance shocked the whole filming crew with its mastery and fresh ideas. In the end of the film Zimmer asked this couple to dance again and George Valentin anwered in a real sound with his voice of a French man , that he would do it with a great pleasure.

It was very strange to know about such "silent movie" in the year of 2011. When I first heard about The Artist, I had a feeling that this will be a movie experience unlike any other: A black-and-white silent film. Now, a lot of people might not know this, but the last black-and-white silent film was Charlie Chaplin's 1936 movie, Modern Times. Then, after that, the black-and-white silent film genre decided to take an extremely long break right until today, where it had made its return with The Artist. And this return was really marvelous. The film gives us the space to fly out from the modern cinema and to admire the blessed epoch of silent film. The direction by Michel Hazanavicious was fantastic, and this movie looks downright gorgeous in black and white. Black and white movies can have more deeper emotions than some movies that are made in color. If we speak about acting, Jean Dujardin really deserved his Best Actor win for his outstanding work as George Valentin. Bérénice Bejo could have won Best Supporting Actress for her terrific performance as Peppy Miller.