This is an amiable, intermittently engaging picture that is as charming as it wants to be about 40 percent of the time, better-than-tolerable another 40 percent of the time, and rather dire during the period that it inexplicably uses a large chunk of Bernard Herrmann's score for Vertigo.
My main problem with it was the same thing that made me somewhat resistant to the two immediate prior collaborations between director Michel Hazanavicius and actor Jean Dujardin, the '50s French spy spoofs OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost In Rio. That is, none of the films quite make it at the level of pastiche to which they aspire. Yeah, you got me: I"m one of those jerks who bitched that Austin Powers, International Man Of Mystery didn't LOOK enough like a real Bond picture. And yes, it's true, I've never seen any of the original OSS 117 pictures, but hell, I've seen more than enough Lemmy Caution and Jerry Cotton pictures, and more, to get the general flavor of the '50s-'60s Euro-espionage film (see also Ferry to Hong Kong), and the Hazanavicius spoofs had an umistakable, for my money, close-but-no-cigar feel relative to those.
Similarly, The Artist, which, as you may have read, is a "homage" to the "magic" of the "silent cinema of yesteryear" (I don't know who I'm actually quoting there, but I'm reasonably sure that SOMEBODY has written those precise words with respect to the film), while presented in Academy ratio, or AN Academy ratio, and featuring no, or not much, spoken dialogue, and such, falls kind of short on production design, which struck me as being on the chintzy side, and on black-and-white cinematography, which is frequently more evocative of the house style of Monogram than late '20s Fox. I know that Larry Blamire's Lost Skeleton films are pastiches of films from a different era and genre, but seriously, he does a much more convincing job with a lot less money than what Hazanavicius accomplishes here.
The writing is also kind of slack, which is annoying in a different way. I was put off by how immediately unpleasant the character of the silent-movie artist's wife, played thanklessly by poor Penelope Ann Miller, was. And then I'm saying to myself, why the hell am I complaining about lack of psychological depth in a pastiche movie. But later on, during the part that has the inexcusable use of Herrmann's Vertigo score (and honest, people, I'm not an OVERLY religious man, but this was really a bit much), and the film is really trying to make you feel something, I'm thinking, well, isn't this a cute little game: first it wants me to not worry about depth, and now it wants me to cry. Like I said, annoying.
But, you know, that Dujardin fella sure is deft and energetic, and his foil Bérénice Bejo, while on occasion a trifle overtly contemporary in her projection, is adorable, as is that dog, or dogs, as the case may be. Nevertheless, the fact that this movie is being proclaimed the Best Film of 2011 by various critics' groups is literally—there's no other word for it—insane. One could make a snide remark or two about the various members of said groups perhaps strongly identifying with the film's title character's entitled indignance at his imposed obselescence, but that would just be mean. However, I will say that any expectation that these proclamations will effect some kind of populist wellspringing on the film's behalf is even more insane. We shall see.
Haven’t seen this yet – it’s unlikely to reach the NJ multiplex where I do my flick-viewin’. But both of the OSS 117 movies made me laugh my ass off (something only the first Austin Powers managed); hell, Dujardin makes me laugh just looking at him. He’s got a fantastic comic face. And I’ve never seen Vertigo. So maybe I’m the kinda uncouth barbarian for whom this is ideally suited.
Didn’t A Christmas Tale also use the Vertigo score? I remember Deneuve in a museum, as some sort of combined homage to Vertigo and Dressed to Kill. Is the use of the score blasphemous, or is it just the use to which the film put it? With a newborn keeping me away from the multiplex, I might have to wait for this one On Demand, but thanks for the warning.
As I said, Joel, I’m not an overly religious man, and I’m all for creative recycling; not to use a too-obvious example, but I thought the way Scorsese dropped pieces of Georges Delerue’s score for “Contempt” into “Casino” was both audacious an apt. As for the Desplechin, the “Vertigo” score was meant to be recognized as such. In “The Artist” it’s not crucial, because the lift is entirely banal: it’s meant to jolt the film into an emotional register that the actual on-screen images don’t much justify.
Although I think you meant the Hope/Crosby spy spoof ROAD TO HONG KONG I nevertheless appreciate the FERRY TO HONG KONG reference. I I have fond memories of watching Orson Welles’ hammy performace in this pot boiler years and years ago.
Watching the trailer, I noted to my girlfriend that it looked like the color had simply been removed from the film, rather than shot in black and white. Then I read an interview with the director, and, well:
AVC: Were there challenges in making The Artist look like a silent movie using modern technology?
MH: It’s not a big deal. It’s not a technical challenge; the challenge is in the conception. But what people usually do when they make a period movie is recreate what they are shooting, but they aren’t recreating the way they’re shooting. What I’ve done here is, I recreate as well the way to shoot it. So it’s a very classical way of shooting. There’s no Steadicam, for example.
AVC: You shot the film in color; were the dailies in color?
MH: The dailies were in black in white. In fact, the monitor on set was in black and white!
Er, nice job, buddy. Maybe next time consider it a challenge, bc it is. It looks esp weak coming on the heels of a recent screening of Purple Rose of Cairo.
@ haice: No, I absolutely meant “Ferry to Hong Kong.” There’s a definite generic resemblance between the ’50s-’60s Euro B-espionage film and the picaresque “international” adventure of which “Ferry” is a pretty amusing example.
Almost no movie is shot in black and white any more. They DI it, which is just far more practical, especially for a low budget movie such as this. Maybe the DI isn’t handled as well as it should be like in, say, The White Ribbon or The Man Who Wasn’t There (I haven’t seen the film yet), but I don’t think it’s fair to criticize Hazanavicius for not fighting against a tide, technologically speaking.
THANK YOU. It’s not a terrible movie, but what was the NYFCC smoking when they piled on the accolades?
I was really looking forward to it, but it was such a massive disappointment and more cloying than delightful (which seems to be the most popular adjective for this film). It was kind of grating how many times they’d cut to a reaction shot of an extra (or a theater audience) looking entertained at someone’s antics – it felt like the visual equivalent of a laugh track. A shame because some of those moments were actually amusing, but for me, less so when they were cut like this.
There was one brilliant moment that I thoroughly enjoyed – I can’t give it away, but people may know it when they see it because personally, I thought it was so much better than the rest of the movie. It suggested a different, insanely brilliant picture that could’ve been made using the same raw material, but I was incredibly disappointed when a minute or two later, it was clear it wouldn’t come to pass.
Apropos of absolutely nothing…
Shanghai Express to Region 1 DVD in February. FINALLY.
Hollis–If White Ribbon and Man Who Wasn’t There use the same process, then he should really be embarrased. Interesting to know, thank you. I think it would have been cool if he had made some sort of optical off of a print for a dupey effect (go ahead and correct my terminology), but I suppose there are limits to what is commercially feasible.
The OSS films reminded me far more of the British Stella Artois beer adverts spoofing French films (“Triple filtree for a smooth outcome”) than of any actual existing films. The worrying thing about that was that usually when you see an advert taking material from a film you usually expect the film itself to have had somewhat more imagination. In the OSS cases I usually just wished I was watching the beer commerical rip-offs instead – at least their brevity meant that they did not outstay their welcome.
I’m expecting the next rash of adverts to be in the vein of The Artist now.
“The Artist” is what people who know next to nothing about silent cinema think about silent cinema.
“it’s all dumb show” says Cathy Selden (the great Debbie Reynolds) in “Singin’ in the Rain” and then proceeds to mime broad gestures. Hazanavicius acts as id that’s what silent films actualy did. Anyone who has ver seen L’Herbier’s “L’Argent,” Ozu’s “I Was Born But. . ,” Chaplin’s “City Lights,” Griffth’s “Broken Blossoms,” Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin,” or Guy Maddin’s “Brand Upon the Brain!”(and I’m deliberately picking titles right off the top of my head) knows this isn’t true.
I wonder if Hazanavicius is aware of “Show People,” directed by King Vidor and starring the great Marion Davies. It’s a bout a girl brekaing into Hollywood and becoming a star and features any number of Big Names in cameos. That the character she palys acts broadly before the camera in the films within this film is part of the joke.
The success of “The Artist” with New York critics astounds me. Just shows how provincial New York is these days.
And since you seemed to have missed my implied point, I’ll try and be a little clearer–it doesn’t look like a black and white film; it looks like a film shot only with color in mind whose color was then removed with a flip of the switch. The fact that he felt there was no challenge involved reflects the indifference I feel the final product reflects. So that was what I was getting at, sorry…
I had originally heard that THE MAN (quite possibly my favorite Coen movie) was shock on b/w title stock. But a spin around the web suggests that nope, it really was shot on color and transferred, though one expects Roger Deakins to take more care with the transfer than, well, anybody.
Well black and white films are shot on color stock these days. Often this makes for great visual richness eg. “Under the Cherry Moon,” “Separation.”
But not this time.
David raises an excellent point. I was surprised when some press material said that “in writing and directing The Artist, [Hazanavicius] studied F. W. Murnau classics like Sunrise and City Girl; King Vidor’s The Crowd; and works by Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and Erich von Stroheim—all to rediscover the language of silent filmmaking.” I didn’t get that impression at all.
The film seems even less impressive when you consider the first half of “Wall•E” or the prologue in “Up” – the filmmakers at Pixar have a much better sense of that “language of silent filmmaking.”
I haven’t seen THE ARTIST, though what you say does suggest that this is not the foreign film that makes up for Mirimax making THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES widely unavailable. Speaking about Kiarostami have all the critics and critics’ groups forgotten CERTIFIED COPY? Was it released too early this year? Do they think it’s last year’s movie? Is Meryl Streep in THE IRON LADY so obviously superior to Juliette Binoche? I see San Francisco has given CERTIFIED its best foreign language film.
Not only was ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ shot on colour stock, there was even a foreign DVD release that included the colour version:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare/manwho.htm
@Partisan, I think its unfortunate release schedule was probably a factor. (FWIW, I think Glenn may have included it on his 2010 list.) It seems kind of ridiculous that the film was available overseas on DVD last December when the film didn’t open here until March, and even then it only made it to something like 5 screens at any given time.
Agh, nm, I was wrong.
The wife wants to see this but there just seems to be something about it that rubs me the wrong way. Too cute by half is the feeling I get from it and I’m glad to see I’m not just being a Grinch.
I thought the Austin Powers films were more like spoofs of In Like Flint and Modesty Blaise which themselves are spoofs of course.
Glenn, I’m delighted to discover, at long last, that there’s someone else who’s as bothered by the use of the Herrmann music as I was (and am); and coincidentally,
your objections were posted at approximately the same time as mine (at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?cat=9).
I share Glenn and Jonathan’s disdain for THE ARTIST’s use of the VERTIGO score, but I wonder if there are any purists who are equally angered by Guy Maddin’s appropriation of silent cinema to express sexual fantasies that couldn’t have made explicitly by Murnau or Eisenstein.
@ Jonathan: That’s a great post overall, although unlike you I admire Scorsese’s use of the Delerue music, as I said; but I think there’s a metatextual context there that justifies it. No such thing exists in “The Artist.” Hearing the music had a very distinct ill effect on me; my poor wife (to adopt Herman Mankiewicz’s phrase) could feel me squirming next to her.
@Steve: I can’t say I’m flummoxed by what Guy does, and I don’t know any silent movie purists who are. I don’t think silent cinema itself can be “appropriated,” and I think Maddin’s dialogue-less material is more apt and interesting than, for instance, that dreadful Peter Sellars “Caligari” pastiche of many years back. Of course I’m also kind of a perv, and Guy’s taste in screen sirens runs to my own. But I could also say that about most of the silent film purists I know!
I fell for all of the critical huzzahs as I was really looking forward to seeing it. I finally saw it this weekend and your reaction pretty much sums up what I felt. I called someone immediately after and said that at times it was amusing but I couldn’t figure out all of the critical hullabaloo. It was trying too hard and as a result came off like a well meaning but annoying relative who keeps telling you to “Just smile…Where’s your smile?”.
It wasn’t very original either so it wasn’t really like a new twist on an old theme. As an earlier commenter noted there is a brief moment in the film where I thought it was going to take off but the scene ended far too quickly and it went back to being a genial but ultimately disappointing film certainly not worthy of all the high praise it has received.
I didn’t see either of the OSS movies, so I don’t know how they worked. I liked THE ARTIST, but I also don’t see what all the fuss is about; as far as movies capturing the magic of silent films and paying homage to them, HUGO has this beat in spades. Also, one thing that bugged me about Hazanavicius is how he’s said in interviews that silent films were essentially sexless. Uh, no.
I adored the OSS movies and am salivating for this one.
As for VERTIGO: this shouldn’t be a total surprise. Hazanavicius used a faux VERTIGO cue at the climax of LOST IN RIO, so I assume here he could afford the real thing.
I also understand that the black-and-white image is “purer” in digital than on 35mm.
And thanks so much for the nice plug for Larry and the Lost Skeleton!
Will watch the restored Greed and London After Midnight instead.
“none of the films quite make it at the level of pastiche to which they aspire. Yeah, you got me: I”m one of those jerks who bitched that Austin Powers, International Man Of Mystery didn’t LOOK enough like a real Bond picture.”
Didn’t notice you complaining that the new Muppets movie looked/felt/played more like a Muppets guest-starring Glee episode than, well, a Muppets movie. By the way, I have some ignorant Tarkovsky-bashing for you! Here is a hipster dating column of sorts on a women’s site called The Hairpin. A girl writes in to complain that her boyfriend is a vicious snob. Tarkovsky is not mentioned in her question, but we are told that he “reads reviews by many critics online of various indie/foreign/art films.” What a drag! Well, our advice columnist, who goes by the pseudonym “A Dude,” brings up Solaris himself, replying in part that:
This is about a person with a tragic sense of inferiority taking it out on strangers via their cultural preferences and his lover via emotional cruelty. He may feel genuine regret when the tears start flowing, but if he is smart enough to trick people into thinking that he actually enjoys Tarkovsky (I mean, have you seen the original Solaris? It may have amazing moments and aesthetic value, but IT IS SO BORING) he is smart enough to know what he’s doing.
http://thehairpin.com/2011/12/snobs-erotica-decoder-rings-and-the-new-relationship-gift
Her boyfriend may very well be a “vicious snob,” but if she’s going to that guy for advice, he real problem is investing too much in smug assholes.
I love when people use words and phrases like “aesthetic value” and “nuance” and “character development” and “layered” and “the human condition.” I think to myself “That’s a person who knows what’s what.”
MW and David Dolan: What’s the potentially brilliant moment? I’m going crazy now …
You want us to spoil it??
I SAW the damned thing and I’m completely baffled. I recall no such moment. Please, please, please … just a hint?
Le Faustin: Cast your mind back to the film. Shortly after the introduction of sound to the industry. Now think of a famous Harlan Ellison short story. You there yet?
I feel like I’ve entered some sort of bizarro universe, where up is down, left is right, and everyone unquestioningly agrees that The Artist is a shitty movie. Huh. How weird.
I don’t always agree with Glenn (nor do I require that of good film criticism), but I think this is the first time that I’ve simply been unable to fathom his perspective on a film at all. There’s just no point in the above post where I can reconcile his description of the movie with the one that I saw. Except for some technical details, like the fact that this is indeed a silent movie, in black and white, and the director makes a reference to another movie by lifting its musical score for a scene. (My god, what a crime! Certainly no one’s ever done THAT before!) Beyond that… yeah, nothing.
And some of the complaints in the comments… from people judging only by the TRAILER. The black & white photography isn’t black & whitey enough? Really? Do you not hear yourselves?
I realize that when you watch movies for a living, a deeply-ingrained cynicism inevitably sets in. It’s a hazard of the job. I get it. Been there. I find myself fighting my own cynicism every day, and often failing. But geez, there’s got to be a limit to that, and this exceeds my limit by a mile.
So yeah, I liked the movie. No, I loved it. Every frame of it. And this little backlash against the film that you’ve got brewing here is what looks insane from this end.
Ah, the old “if you don’t like this you must be a cynic” canard. I’ve actually read worse bullshit with reference to this film, in Film Comment even, wherein Laura Kern says “[t]his is a rare instance of movie perfection. Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly averse to feeling good.” Nothing I enjoy better than getting psychoanalyzed based on my opinion. I’m sorry (but not that sorry, really) that John Z can’t fathom my perspective on the film, but as I ACTUALLY SAID IN MY PIECE, I didn’t hate “The Artist.”. And as I ACTUALLY SAID IN MY PIECE, I have no a priori objections to films adapting the musical scores from other films. I just thought in the case of “The Artist,” the “Vertigo” lift DIDN’T WORK. At all.
As for cynicism, well, who knows. I based my thoughts on the film on what I actually saw on screen, not on any background I accrued on it, because I really hadn’t read any articles on the film. Which means I actually had no idea how apparently proud Hazanavicius is of his technical slackness, or how actually ignorant he is of silent film craft beyond a certain superficial level. Having been apprised of that, I’d say that John Z is casting his accusations of cynicism at the wrong people. If anything, the folks in the comments section expressing objections to the film are quaintly earnest by comparison.
I suppose that’s the sort of reaction I should expect for posting a comment in the middle of the night. I didn’t mean to imply that the very act of disliking this movie at all was inherently cynical, but I do find your stated reasons for disliking it to be cynical, and I felt it worth injecting a dissenting opinion in the comments when there hasn’t been much of one expressed so far. When I’ve disagreed with your other reviews (whether positive or negative), I can usually at least understand where you’re coming from. Just not this one. Sorry.
Carry on…
@ Josh Z: “That’s the sort of reaction I should expect…” Really? As if I had come back with some vitriol-flecked ad hominem attack worthy of Lex G when all I did was drop the word “bullshit.”
Accusing someone of cynicism, or of employing a cynical argument or “reason,” does tend to put the accused on the defensive. One’s first impulse is to say “No I’m not,” and then follow by enumerating the ways he or she is NOT cynical, and by about reason three one says to oneself, well, why am I swallowing THIS bait, and maybe sheepishly walks away. You think my reasons for not being 100% sold on “The Artist” are cynical; that’s fine, I guess. There’s no way I can argue with that. They are my reasons, they satisfy me, I don’t consider them cynical, and that’s all. But your saying they’re cynical without going into any specifics isn’t really going to compel me to reconsider them in any meaningful way. All it’s going to do is engender my resentment. I can, on the other hand, make very specific arguments that Laura Kern’s putting “The Artist” up against “Singin’ in the Rain” and proclaiming they come out even is not just specious but offensive. I COULD, but I won’t, because I’ve actually got better things to do at the moment.
In any event, Mr. Z, nothing that’s been said here should (or indeed has been meant to) interfere with your enjoyment of “The Artist.” I disagree strongly with the critics’ groups that have proclaimed it the best film of the year not because I believe the film to be bad, or because I am not 100% in love with it, but simply because I believe there were a lot of better films released in 2011, and this one seems a VERY peculiar consensus choice.
What I was trying to say is that I think my tone came off too strongly in the first comment, which was written in the middle of the night when I should have just gone to bed and mulled over my thoughts in the morning. And to be fair, you invited a strong reaction by calling the critics’ groups who’ve voted this a Best Film “literally insane.”
As to why I think your review is cynical, let’s take your complaint that the cinematography “is frequently more evocative of the house style of Monogram than late ’20s Fox.” Well, sure. Do you assume that’s unintentional? The film also references Sunset Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, Fred Astaire musicals, Vertigo (as you noted), and dozens of other famous movies that aren’t from the silent era.
Your comparison to Lost Skeleton of Cadavra I can see being appropriate for the OSS 117 films, which were likewise parodies of their given genre. But The Artist isn’t just a genre parody (or even a parody at all). It’s a pastiche (I agree with your use of that term) of all sorts of old movies that the director loves, using the silent film conceit as a framework.
That didn’t work for you, I get that. But you accuse Hazanavicius of being both lazy and ignorant of silent film craft for making what seem to be clearly deliberate artistic choices to encompass more than just silent films in his love letter to all forms of old cinema. Yeah, sorry, I find that cynical.
Josh, Glenn said that his review came before he read any articles about the film, though he has subsequently, and discovered that Hazanavicius is open about his general ignorance of silent films. And Glenn, any links to those articles would be welcome, because from what I’ve seen of THE ARTIST, Hazanavicius believes that “silent film” means “black and white people not talking.”*
*I have used that joke three times now.
Bill: “I have used that joke three times now.”
Well, as Earl Williams told Hildy Johnson, “Manufacture for use.”
@bill It really is difficult to call it a triumph in “silent” filmmaking when so much of the film relies on words too (title cards and at least one letter), particularly the tongue-in-cheek remarks making fun of the fact that it’s a silent film. At least one or two of those one-liners were a little poignant in the way they highlighted Valentin’s misfortune from the rise of sound pictures, but most of them were too clever by half.
Yeah, because silent movies never used intertitles or on-screen text to tell the story. Right.
Your comment about the tongue-in-cheek jokes making fun of the fact that this is a silent film is interesting to me. Were you expecting this to play as though it were a movie actually produced in the 1920s, some sort of lost relic recently uncovered? This is a modern movie, set in the past as a period piece but made today and playing to an audience accustomed to films with sound. Is there something wrong with acknowledging that and having fun with it?
You missed my point completely. First off, my criticism regarding intertitles isn’t the fact that it uses them, it’s that so many jokes are just there for you to READ.
And no, there’s nothing wrong with tongue-in-cheek remarks of that nature, but again, I wasn’t criticizing the fact that they made them – I didn’t think most of them were that good. Hell, I praised a few of them for being poignant, but when you start beating a joke into the ground over the course of two hours, it doesn’t seem all that funny or clever.
Re: Hazanavicius on silent film (from http://www.straight.com/article-560056/vancouver/artist-conjured-silent-crowd-pleaser ):
“Everybody thinks it’s very cerebral, very intellectual to go see a silent black-and-white movie, but actually, I think, as an audience [member], it’s the exact opposite. It’s very childish; you’re playing with the story. It’s very delighting and very sensual.”
and later in the article: “Hazanavicius dismissed the earliest silent films as “too primitive”, but he loves the movies made at the end of the silent era.”
The movies made at the end of the silent era were infinitely more sophisticated than “The Artist.” See for example Marcel L’Herbier’s “L’Argent.”
As for sampling Benny Herrmann, I was upset when Techine used Phillipe Sarde’s score for “Barocco” in his
“The Girl on the Train.” And Andre Techine wrote and directed “Barocco.”
Philippe Sarde reuses his own music probably more than any other contemporary film composer, so that might not have been Techine sampling “Barocco”. (Sarde’s score for Techine’s “Strayed” sounded practically like a “Sarde’s Greatest Hits” album)