A few weeks ago, I watched "The Artist" at the Kentucky Theater - it's an old movie theater in the center of town and it really turned out to be the perfect place to watch this particular movie. Long story short: it was wonderful and I want it to win ALL THE OSCARS (the way it already seems to have won ALL THE BAFTAS).
I enjoyed the performance of both lead actors, neither of which I had ever seen before. I thought Jean Dujardin looked eerily like he could've been an actual silent movie star - an impossibly handsome, hilarious French version of Jon Hamm. His antics with the dog were reminiscent of William Powell and "Asta" in "The Quiet Man", and I was impressed with his acting style overall. It really takes a particular type of actor to act in a silent movie, since it's a completely different way of moving and of expressing emotion, and he had it down pat. It'll be weird to see him in a talkie next, unless of course this movie sparks a trend, which it better.
Something about Bérénice Bejo initially bothered me, and I really don't know what it was. She's a good actress and her character was pretty interesting. Honestly, I think it was her face. I think she's a good-looking woman, but she doesn't really look like a silent movie star - she doesn't have the youthful, full face with the seemingly endless expanse of porcelain white skin that was so in vogue at the time. She's much too old to have been a silent movie star as well. We discussed this in my film class last week, and it's true; leading ladies in the silent era were extremely young, as in somewhere between 20 and 25 type young. It's only with the development of the talkies that one could still play a romantic lead and be in one's thirties - I need to write a post on that phenomenon sometime, because it fascinates me.
But that criticism is neither here nor there and really has no bearing on the movie, which was just beautiful. It was a tribute to the motion picture industry and in a way a homage to those silent stars who didn't experience an easy transition to talking pictures. I loved that it could easily have turned into a tragedy à la John Gilbert but ended on a hopeful note instead. George Valentin will be okay, and Hollywood will be the better for it.
And I love, of course, that this is a silent movie - something so many people reject without ever having experienced - and that it's drawing huge crowds all over the world. Maybe, just maybe, Mr Thalberg was right after all - and talking pictures really are "just a passing fad".
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