THE ARTIST

The Artist, starring French actors Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. The Artist tells the story of the rise and the fall of someone of great status. The story of George Valentin, a Douglas Fairbanks-esque action silent film actor. He is a man’s man and the ladies love him. One day, during the premiere of his latest film, a fan by the name of Peppy Miller bumps into him after being pushed out. Everyone stops, but he laughs off the incident and they start playing off each other. After kissing him on the cheek everyone wants to know who this girl is. Over time, the audience watch her as she slowly rises to the top as a talkies film actress. George Valentin, when the talkies come, believe it will die out as a gimmick, but as talkies become apparent, he falls from this status to depression and alcoholism.
The cinematography is beautiful and there were a lot of images that the film captures that really enforce the rise of Peppy and the dramatic fall of George. Within the first couple minutes, the audience sees George standing behind the screen watching himself in his latest film. The camera is set in a way that makes George appear bigger, larger than life. He is top of the world. There is another scene when George would salute this Picture of Dorian Gray-esque portrait of himself. When the talkies come full force, he refuses to believe that such a thing will last, but he is wrong.
The best shot that really shows the audience exactly what is happening is when he leaves the studio head and is heading down the stairs. The camera is far back where the audience can see the entire stairwell and watch the people going up and down these steps. The audience can see George coming down the stairs and then there is Peppy going upstairs, and she stops George. They start talking. Right there, the shot establishes he is going down and she is going up. That scene really says it all.
The Artist also uses the technique of a movie-within-a-movie and those films also reflect what is going on. The best scene is when it’s the same day that the stock market crash, and George is at the theater watching his film. The last scene is his character is stuck in quicksand, and with his hands outreach, he can’t save himself from oblivion and he’s gone. There is also the scene when he is walking and sees his reflection from this clothing store for a tuxedo. As for Peppy, the audience see her name rise from last billing to first billing. There are articles that praise her rise to fame. There’s a shot in the film when the audience see Peppy applying her own makeup and the next scene there are five women doing her makeup, putting her jewelry, and fixing her hair and clothes.
The musical score by Ludovic Bource is definitely one of the best scores that I have personally heard. Since The Artist is technically a silent film (although the use of sound is used in three scenes), the musical score has to act as a dialogue. In the beginning of the film, the music is upbeat, sunny, very musical. He is a man who walks with a skip in his step and a song in his heart. You hear this in the score. As the film progresses, the musical score changes from this upbeat-gotta-dance-jazzy to this very mellow depressed sad tone. The composer, Ludovic Bource, when it is the height of George’s downfall, he uses a very specific score by Bernard Hermann, and this specific score, works effectively with the scene, which really caught me off-guard. The specific score used when George is at the end of his rope basically and attempts suicide, is the love theme from Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo. Two films from two completely different sides of the spectrum, with two distinct musical scores, that specific piece of music used for that scene, works in a way that I never would ever have thought and it is just as powerful.
The Artist is the story of many things: times are changing, the rise and fall of someone who has great status, how a man’s pride and ambition can blind him of what’s really going on. I love The Artist. Personally, watching The Artist, really reinforced why I want to be in film in the first place-to create that connection with the audience, to convey an emotional response which was exactly how I felt. The performances are incredibly real and not too over the top as most silent films tend to be. Jean Dujardin, in his Golden Globes acceptance speech was told he will never make it in film because “his face is too expressive”. His performance as George really establishes that he is a man from another era. He is able to convey suspense, seduction, love, with just moving his eyebrows. Bérénice Bejo as Peppy is just as incredible. She is not too overly…well peppy. I love her signature bit-with a smile on her face, she does the Charleston and blows a kiss. That is Peppy-someone who looks at the bright side of things, no matter what the situation is. She is the golden pot at the end of the rainbow if only George can really that. Definitely, the best film of 2011.