“The Artist” is a joy. It’s pure, unadulterated pleasure for anyone who loves movies; loves their history, loves their possibilities, loves their capacity to take you out of yourself for a little while and transport you to a world of glamour, music, big emotions and big fun.
It’s a black-and-white throwback, a homage to the silent era, but without a trace of mustiness or awestruck reverence. It’s a valentine to moviemaking – by no coincidence whatever is its protagonist named George Valentin – specifically to the period of the late ’20s and early ’30s when motion pictures were evolving from silents to the sound era.
French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ story isn’t exactly original, borrowing liberally from “A Star is Born” as it traces the crossed paths and contrasting fortunes of Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a big Hollywood star on his way down, and his protégé, a sprightly ingénue named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo, Hazanavicius’ wife) on her way up.
Throwing in a touch of “Singin’ in the Rain” (also set on the cusp of the silent/sound divide) and liberal borrowings from the playbooks of the debonair William Powell, the dashing Douglas Fairbanks and the incomparable Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, “The Artist” captures the tone and the tempo of movies of those times with an exuberance that leaves you feeling positively giddy.
Without sound, other than brassy orchestral accompaniments that evoke the times, the performers in “The Artist” have to go grand and broad in their gestures and facial expressions to put their performances across.
But in no way are they overdone, although Dujardin dances (literally, in a number of scenes) right up to the line without going over the edge into excess.
At the start, Valentin is at the top of his game, on top of the world, exulting in his life as a matinee idol, having himself a flat-out ball in top hat, tux and pencil-thin mustache as he basks in the adulation of his fans. Then out of the adoring crowd emerges starstruck Peppy, an extrovert like him with a blinding smile to match his own.
In two dazzlingly imaginative sequences, one in which her legs dance beneath a scrim that hides her upper body, and the other where she mimes a lover’s clinch with his coat hanging on a coat rack, she catches his eye and wins his heart. But then he resists the advent of sound while she embraces it, and their fortunes dramatically diverge.
Skillfully supported by American actors John Goodman (as a studio mogul), James Cromwell (as Valentin’s loyal chauffeur) and Penelope Ann Miller (as Valentin’s fed-up wife), Dujardin and Béjo light up “The Artist” with such zest that it’s no wonder the picture cleaned up at the Golden Globes. Movies are rarely this much fun, but they should be.
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