"The artist"- Research and a treat

So the group decided to go see the five time Academy Award-winner "The artist" today.
This was both for research, but also to take a break from work. The reason this is research is
that the film is a silent-film, so they used all the old tricks from silent-films back in the 20's and 30's to make the audience understand what was happening. This included black slides with text to explain either sounds or dialogue, but also the music added really made this film shine in my opinion. It really made me understand how important sound is to a film, even though the characters didn't speak the music they chose for the scenes explained the mood. For instance a up-beat jazz for the entertaining and funny bits and a more dramatic classic track for the big emotional scenes.

I must admit I thought it was a bit strange in the beginning, but I dapated quite quickly and it proves that dialogue in the shape of sound and voices aren't necessary to tell a story. Of course the acting needs to be everything but subtle at times to get the point through, but for emotional scenes like the ones we see between the main characters, George Valentin and Peppy Miller the sound is almost unnoticeable and they just stare into each-others eyes and you know what these two are thinking. (as Ed Hooks would say; if two people stare at each-other for more than then seconds their either going to make love or fight.)

The film's plot is:

"Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break."

(Quote: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/)


The story is sort of the classic "boy meets girl", but in this case it is the woman who is the one that wants to take care and protect the man, which I guess is a bit unusual for that type of story.
- But this is just "the big picture".
George is indeed a very independent man, he is too proud to admit that if he wants to continue being a film-star he needs to swallow his pride and adapt to the new "talking films".
He strongly believes that this is just a trend and that it will fade away as quickly as it came and that everybody else is wrong.
The aspiring young dancer Peppy on the other hand is open for change and goes along with it.
A decision that quickly pays off.

The story itself is good, a classic with a twist, but I read it a bit too quickly. Meaning I saw what would cause the conflict between the main characters before it happened, and I also saw the big build up moment at the ending long before it actually "appeared on screen". (won't spoil what it is in case you want to go see it). But I guess the story has to be a bit easier to read when it is a silent-film, just to get the story through to the audience.

My favourite character in this film is George, he is both a bit arrogant and emotional at the same time - And so charismatic. If women don't fall head over heels for this guy then something is really wrong.

The character has his golden-period in the beginning where he is a star and at the beginnging in the film he is at the screening of his latest film, he walks out and gets his applause, people a cheering and clapping and he soaks it all in. He gets his dog out on the stage, (which also acted in his latest film) and shows off with tricks in front of the crowd. While this is happening he totally ignores his female co-star and she has to wait to the very end before he goes over and drags her on stage - She is quite unhappy. So here George is the star and he knows it.

So he has this attitude towards women that is less than fortunate, but people still adore him. He ignores his wife, and their relationship seems to be built on looks and money.

But when things get worse for his career, he ignores it and believes it will all go away. But he clearly gets more and more affected by the fact and this is where his emotional side really shows. And this is where I really found the character interesting. He completely changes, and becomes this broken man who pushes everybody he loves away from him.


Other interesting things I found was the use of facial expressions. There is a lot of "acting with the face", which really works for this kind of film. Every smile is a bit bigger, eyebrows are lifted a bit higher and subtle expressions are exaggerated. But this just helps sell the performance.

It was also a fantastic source for reference to the mime-task since mimes "act with their face".
The lecture we had today was about psychological gestures also made me look extra hard on the body-language in the film and there where some good examples of "self soothing" (stroking their arms, touching neck and so on) in the film. Useful stuff for our mimes performances!

The film was all in all very good! I think it deserved those awards, it is fantastic that a silent-film can win five Oscars in 2012.

I suggest you have a look at this link if you haven't seen the film yet:

The Artist | The Weinstein Company

It's the official page for the film ad includes a entertaining teaser that hopefully makes you want to go see the film. (That is if I haven't spoiled too much for you already, in that case I'm sorry.. Hehe.)