The Artist

[orpheum2]

i am surprised that no one has yet posted on this.I saw it at a well attended afternoon screening yeserday.As someone who has a special interest in the early talkie period i thought that it was very faithful to the era.I think that the main charchter is an amalgam of Douglas fairbanks Snr and John Gilbert.Gilbert whose voice didnt quite match his acting,and fairbanks who was really getting past it as the silent era came to an end.Both of course saw their espective careers go very quickly down the pan.I enjoyed it very much and the dog has got to get the Oscar and Bafta nomination for best supporting actor.Saw him on BBC TV morning news earlier this week.I wished that there were a couple more subtitles as i am not good at lipreading.A good start to the new year.

[CaptainWaggett]

I've raved about it several times though haven't started a thread on account of it being furrin. But I find it hard to believe a better film will be released this year. It is absolutely brilliant and best to go in with as little knowledge as possible because some reviews spoiled the best jokes And it really does have the cutest doggie in film history (silent film doggies obviously have an advantage because their trainers can continue instructing them while the camera is rolling ). Sadly dogs are shamefully discriminated against at the Oscars (it's always said this is because Rin Tin Tin did beat Emil Jannings in the vote for the first Oscar and it was considered this would have brought the prize into disrepute in its first year ).

Do go, even if you've never seen a silent. It's a fantastic introduction to the art form.

[Edward G]

Orpheum,
I saw this reviewed a couple of times on TV recently and as a silent film buff I can't wait to see it. From the clips I have seen it looks true to the silent style and could hopefully persuade a few people to take an interest in silent cinema, beyond the obvious excursions like Chaplin or Keaton. Looking forward to hearing the music that accompanies this. I read where Kim Novak bitterly complained that the lifting of some of the music from Hitchcock's "Vertigo" soundtrack was akin to cimematic rape. It would have obviously been better to create an original and dedicated score but I would presume that there is original content complimented by "sampled" music in the odd sequence. Seems a bit OTT to say the least. I was more perturbed by the photo of Novak that accompanied the article. Looks like she has done some "lifting" herself!

Novak.jpg

[Sgt Sunshine]

I cant wait to see it too.......
There's more excitement the following evening (25/02) with another silent & musical accompaniment.....see link below.

Piccadilly with live music performed by Wurlitza

Cheers
Sgt S

[CaptainWaggett]

I cant wait to see it too.......
There's more excitement the following evening (25/02) with another silent & musical accompaniment.....see link below.

Piccadilly with live music performed by Wurlitza

Cheers
Sgt S

Piccadilly is great though I've never quite got over my disappointment in finding it's not set in Manchester as one set of NFT programme notes said

[Mr Sloane]

Brilliant - witty,moving,clever superbly filmed scored and acted and boasting three charming leads a beautiful leading lady, a sexy leading man and a cute dog (and I hate Jack Russels !) . I laughed I cried, I loved it. I will be surprised if I see a better new film this year.

The one sad thing was the age of the audience,there was a lot of us there for a 18:00 showing but the vast majority were 50 plus. I do think it will be a great shame if the younger potential audience miss this film.

[Windyridge]

Brilliant - a cute dog (and I hate Jack Russels !)

Oh no! I can't like you anymore. JRs are wonderful, loyal, intelligent dogs. They need to work for everything they want, even being let outside, so are definitely high maintenance for a lazy dog owner, but I've never owned a dog so rewarding - and I've owned many other breeds.

But to the thread itself, I loved every minute of The Artist and it deserves every award which will undoubtedly be thrown at it.

[CaptainWaggett]

For those who want to see more of Uggie

The Artist's dog Uggie visits the Guardian - video | Film | guardian.co.uk

[charliekane]

Can only add more of the same - saw it last weekend and loved it. Gorgeous film, fantastically well made by someone who has clearly seen and been influenced by all of the right films, and terrific performances all round, although I was a little puzzled by Malcom McDowell's appearance. Brief to say the least.
A pity that Kim Novak - who I loved in Vertigo, Picnic, The Notorious Landlady, Boys Night Out ience and lots of others - seems to have gotten hereself a little hysterical over the use of Bernard Herrmann's music in the film. They only used about five minutes of it and, although it was a surprise after hearing so much original music, I didn't think it spoiled either the film or Herrmann's reputation - interestingly enough, genuine silent films of the era (1920s) were often accompanied by whatever existing music the theatre orchestra/trio/pianist thought suitable.
Back to The Artist, though - several people (me included) actually applauded at the end of the film when I saw it, and there was a definite sense somehow that we had all shared a special experience (and if that sounds a bit airy fairy, take a look at everyone's faces on the way out when you see it). By no means just a gimmick or a novelty, although anyone else considering a silent film to capitalise on its success should think very hard about doing so - I can't see anyone topping this.

[Nick Dando]

This is an article,in passing, about The Artist and other silent films.

Lights, camera, quick backflip: the eloquence of silent films | Film | The Guardian

Nick

Lights, camera, quick backflip: the eloquence of silent films
Magic moments in films rarely need words, says Nicholas Wright, as his play about Hollywood, Travelling Light, hits the stage
Nicholas Wright
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 January 2012 21.45 GMT


God knows how many films I've seen in my life (about one a day is my average), but I've seldom witnessed such a receptive audience as I did for The Artist the other week. Memories of all the silent films I watched during my childhood came swinging back to me; looking around, the rest of the cinema seemed to bask in a similarly rapt and innocent haze of pleasure. When it was over, they clapped as they would at the end of an exceptionally good play.

Of all the many strengths of Michel Hazanavicius's film, the absence of words is the greatest. No words means no reliance on a form of communication that isn't, in fact, anything like as effective as we think. The language of gesture often says more – and it's always more passionate. It's obvious but easy to forget, even though we wonder every day why our exchanges by text and email seem so tinny and thin, why they fail to convey friendship, love or just plain amiability as warmly as we would like.

Think of the reckless physicality with which the truly great movie stars put their stories across: Cary Grant, interrupting a polite compliment with a backflip in 1938's Holiday, just for emphasis. Or Greta Garbo's backbone, coiled like a spring as she swoops down to suck the breath from her lover's mouth as though it were honey. Or John Wayne's menacing waddle: is he an American hero or a crusty old curmudgeon? He's not letting on, and that's the point. Think of the mockingly girlish delicacy of Brando, or Monroe as she sashays down the side of the train in Some Like It Hot. Modern screen acting can seem very cerebral by comparison, and also rather corporate, as if having anything too interesting going on might upset the customers.

While researching my new play Travelling Light, about an eastern European immigrant who becomes a major player in Hollywood's golden age, I came across the autobiography of Cecil Hepworth, one of the founders of the British film industry. Hepworth recalled, at the age of 21, dashing up to the top-floor London workshop of the inventor Robert W Paul, the man who pioneered the projection of moving pictures on to screens in Britain. He wanted to sell the great man his newly invented electric lamp, and found himself clambering over a dozen or more Polish and Armenian Jews asleep on the stairs.

These were travelling showmen, waiting for Paul's latest projectors to be delivered, so they could go back home and dazzle the peasants of the wide-flung shtetls, the Jewish communities of eastern Europe, with the wonders of cinema. I realised how deeply cinema had taken root in Yiddish popular culture before the first world war. And then how profoundly Yiddish culture had influenced American film, as the Hollywood movie moguls, almost all of them Jewish immigrants, transformed the plays, vaudeville acts, folk tales and sentimental musical comedies they remembered from the old country into an American art form. They then presented it, in true democratic fashion, coast to coast, in palatial theatres glowing with chandeliers and marble staircases, to rich and poor alike for a mere 25 cents admission.

What were the stories these moguls told? Girl meets boy, they lose each other, they get back together. Corny? Sure, but that's how it is in peasant life and, come to think of it, that's how it is everywhere else. What else? A mixed-up young man clashes with his traditionally minded parents: a perennial theme in Jewish literature, as the cultural gap between city and shtetl grew wider. Any movie examples? Too many to count. And a popular tale from 19th-century Yiddish pulp fiction: a shtetl plagued by crooks and assassins is rescued by a man of exceptional courage who draws his gun and drives the baddies away. That's right: High Noon is a Jewish movie.

The first talking film was Al Jolson's 1927 hit The Jazz Singer, paradoxically not really a talkie at all, but a glorious silent-and-talkie piece of Yiddish schmaltz: after that, silent movies were dead. But my cinema-buff uncle Geoff, a stalwart of the Cape Town Film Society, went on showing them to my family throughout my childhood. Not all of them were as good as they were cracked up to be. The fantasies of Georges Méliès I found faintly malodorous: all those tacky moonbound trains and weird homunculi – and weren't the illusions merely stop-go camerawork? Even I could work that out, and I was only six. Chaplin was fine as long as he was funny; when he simpered, I blushed and looked away. Buster Keaton's cool and classical style was a lot more like it. Fritz Lang's Metropolis, even in a tattered old print, was astonishing, and FW Murnau's Sunrise hypnotic in its beauty. I remember my mother's voice ringing through the darkness: "Should Nicky really be watching this?" I'm glad I did.

• Travelling Light, a new play by Nicholas Wright, opens on 18 January at the National Theatre, London SE1, nationaltheatre.org.uk. There will be a live cinema broadcast on 9 February

[christoph404]

Went to see it last night, I'll join the consensus heaping praise on this film, its hugely entertaining and beautifully done, the leading lady is an absolute stunner in a quirky kind of way and so expressive, and the leading man is also superb, you really are drawn in to the emotions of this piece by the performers, a very simple story brilliantly executed and presented in silent form....I'll give it ten out of ten.

[Merton Park]

Having seen the trailer for the first time last September, I have been desperate to see this ever since.

The two lead actors are excellent and the dog, amazing. As has already been said, in this modern age of HD,IMAX and the re introduction of 3D, the Producers took a huge gamble on making a black and white Silent film. Well it's paid off big time. A hugely entertaining film that I hope takes a fortune.

Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect and the leads aren't Fred and Ginger, but it is a wonderfully original film that is well worth seeing by all true film fans.

9 out of 10

[moonfleet]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the names of the two main actors, it's Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo ...

[Nick Dando]

From the BBC News site

BBC News - Silent movie The Artist leads Bafta nominations

Nick

Silent movie The Artist leads Bafta nominations
Silent movie The Artist leads this year's Baftas with 12 nominations, including best film and best director.
Its two stars, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, are in the running for best actor and actress.
British Cold War-era spy movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is close behind The Artist, with 11 nominations.
Meryl Streep is nominated for best actress in The Iron Lady, with George Clooney among best actor hopefuls.
Streep and Bejo are up against Michelle Williams for My Week With Marilyn, Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Help's Viola Davis.
Clooney and Dujardin take on Brad Pitt for Moneyball, Gary Oldman for Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy and Shame's Michael Fassbender.
Martin Scorsese's Hugo has nine nominations - Scorsese gains a nod for best director, while his other recent film, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, is up for best documentary.
Other movies in the running for best film are Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, The Descendants, Drive and The Help.
Drive's Nicolas Winding Refn, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy's Tomas Alfredson and Lynne Ramsey - We Need To Talk About Kevin - are nominated for best director.
Five films will battle it out to be named oustanding British film at the awards ceremony next month - My Week With Marilyn, Senna, Shame, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Senna, about the life of Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, is also up for best documentary.
Actors turned directors Ralph Fiennes and Paddy Considine are recognised in the outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer category, for Coriolanus and Tyrannosaur respectively.
Joe Cornish is also nominated for Attack the Block, alongside Richard Ayoade for Submarine and Will Sharpe for Black Pond.
Abi Morgan's The Iron Lady, which has four nominations in total, is cited for best original screenplay, as is The Artist - written by its director Hazanavicius - John Michael McDonagh's The Guard, Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig's Bridesmaids and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

[CaptainWaggett]

Cinema-goers complain that Oscar favourite The Artist has no dialogue - Telegraph

Cinema-goers complain that Oscar favourite The Artist has no dialogue
The Artist is being tipped to collect a raft of Baftas – but some cinemagoers are demanding their money back because it is a silent film.

The tribute to 1920s Hollywood, the black and white movie has already won three Golden Globe awards for its dazzling portrayal of the pre-talkie era.

But audiences at some Odeon Cinemas are unimpressed by the homage to the "Golden Age" of silent films and a smaller-than-usual screen.

Film-fan Nicola Shearer, 25, attended a screening at Odeon Liverpool One after a wave of complaints. She was asked by cinema staff if she knew "it is a silent film".

English graduate Nicola, from Liverpool, said: "Of course I knew it was and I asked the usher why she wanted to know.
She then told me some people complained and asked for refunds because there is no sound and the screen is smaller.

"I thought it was really funny and laughed."

The film was purposely reduced to a smaller screen size to give it an authentic look of original silent films which were hugely popular from the late 19th century to the early 30s.

Many silent film stars like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy are still household names despite the fact that we live in an era of films laden with compter graphics.

Critics say that is what makes The Artist a "magnificent crowd-pleaser".

Odeon and UCI Cinemas Group initially denied there had been any complaints made at screenings at their multiplex in Liverpool city centre.

A spokesperson first said: "We can confirm that there have been no complaints/refunds regarding The Artist screenings."

But after being confronted with statements from amazed cinemagoers Odeon admitted refunds had been given to some of their guests. The spokesman said: "Odeon Liverpool One can confirm it has issued a small number of refunds to guests who were unaware that The Artist was a silent film.

"The cinema is happy to offer guests a refund on their film choice is they raise concern with a member of staff within 10 minutes of the film starting."

[Mr Sloane]

Cinema-goers complain that Oscar favourite The Artist has no dialogue - Telegraph

Very few people go to the cinema these days without knowing something about a film (especially one boasting no blockbuster names on the billboards) I wonder how many real complaints have been made?

[Sgt Sunshine]

More interesting news on a long forgotten silent......

BBC News - First Oscar winner Wings flies back onto big screen

to be released as part of Paramount's 100th anniversary....
Cheers
Sgt S

[CaptainWaggett]

More interesting news on a long forgotten silent......

BBC News - First Oscar winner Wings flies back onto big screen

to be released as part of Paramount's 100th anniversary....
Cheers
Sgt S

Not forgotten by me - it's very good

[didi-5]

I've never seen 'Wings' - was this one restored for Photoplay Productions back in the days of Thames Silents? Anyway, very much look forward to catching up with it.

Was rather sad to see a half-page ad in the Time Out today for the upcoming screen on Murnau's 'Faust', based on the fact that because lots of people are enjoying seeing 'The Artist' that somehow it needs to be mentioned in conjunction with any silent screening. I haven't seen 'The Artist' yet but I can't imagine it is a patch on a film like 'Faust'.

[CaptainWaggett]

I've never seen 'Wings' - was this one restored for Photoplay Productions back in the days of Thames Silents? Anyway, very much look forward to catching up with it.

Was rather sad to see a half-page ad in the Time Out today for the upcoming screen on Murnau's 'Faust', based on the fact that because lots of people are enjoying seeing 'The Artist' that somehow it needs to be mentioned in conjunction with any silent screening. I haven't seen 'The Artist' yet but I can't imagine it is a patch on a film like 'Faust'.

Well, they're very different genres so it's not really fair to compare them but I loved The Artist enough to see it twice in two months while I can't imagine ever wanting to see Faust again