A homage to the silent movie era

The Artist, a black-and-white homage to the era of silent movies, has a growing number of film insiders talking in Hollywood, where it is increasingly tipped as a leading Oscars hopeful.

The movie by French film-maker Michel Hazanavicius won best film and best director last week by the New York Film Critics Circle, lending weight to its hopes for the Academy Awards.

On the same day it secured a best picture nomination for the Independent Spirit Awards, another key pointer to who will vie for a golden statuette at the climax of Hollywood’s just-started awards season, in February.

Distributed by The Weinberg Company – a veteran Oscar-backer which produced last year’s Best Film The King’s Speech – it tells the story of silent film star George Valentin whose career is torpedoed by the arrival of the “talkies”.

As his fortunes plummet, a young dancer and actress who initially idolises him – Peppy Miller, who catches his eye, and heart – is on her way up to Hollywood stardom in the new movies-with-sound era.

Without spoiling the plot, the climax brings the pair back together in a dramatic and touching finale.

Shot in black and white with a remarkable attention to period detail and dance routines recalling the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the movie has won critics’ praise on both sides of the Atlantic. Actor Jean Dujardin, who plays Valentin, won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and the movie has won a series of other awards in Europe and the US, before it opened in US cinemas on November 23.

The San Francisco Chronicle called the film “a profound achievement”, in a review published last Thursday.

“A silent movie – or rather, a sound film with a music soundtrack – it evinces such mastery of form that it could easily be mistaken for a real classic,” it said. More recently, the movie’s director and key cast travelled to Los Angeles to present it at the American Film Institute (AFI) festival, staying long enough in Hollywood to leave few doubts about their Oscars campaign hopes.

Mr Hazanavicius said that, while silent films were made by many countries in the 1920s including Russia, Germany and France, he decided to pay homage to US movies of the era because “they took most care” in telling stories.