The Artist. Rated PG (mild themes). 100 minutes. Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius.
Verdict: This little film’s Oscar haul is totally deserved as the rules of contemporary motion picture production are rewritten.
With the release of Warner Bros.’ The Jazz Singer (1927) starring Al Jolson and Lights of New York (1928), the era of silent film in Hollywood began an irreversible decline. Honoured, respectively, as the first feature-length ‘part-talkie’ and ‘talkie’, these two films heralded the arrival of synchronised dialogue and images – and by 1929, Hollywood was no longer producing silent films.
Any reservations about the extent to which a black and white, almost entirely silent film would rate against the kind of movies we are more used to seeing these days, instantly vanished. With his affectionate pastiche on the end of Hollywood’s celebrated silent era, Mr Hazanavicius delivers an extraordinarily involving, richly rewarding and complete cinematic experience.
