The Artist – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
This Week: Alex Brisson joins me for a conversation about The Artist
Last week after finishing my daily Jeopardy! viewing I decided to turn to Netflix for the first time in a while and see what was on my watchlist that I hadn’t touched recently. Perhaps the inclination to turn to Netflix instead of my more frequent streaming services, notably Paramount+ and PBS, might well have been urged by the recent poor market performance of the streaming giant following its first poor quarterly performance in its history. Still, there are many wonderful shows and movies to watch on Netflix, and one in particular caught my attention.
I first saw The Artist back in 2011 when it was playing in the theatres. I went with a group of friends from Rockhurst to see it at the now old Tivoli Cinema in the Westport neighborhood of Kansas City, and for whatever reason the people I went with decided we would get there about halfway into the film, something which annoyed me because this was one that I really wanted to see. We took our places in the back row of the theatre with about 40 minutes left in the 90-minute picture. I enjoyed what I saw but felt cheated at not getting to see the entire thing, and for whatever reason I never got around to going back to the Tivoli to see it again in full. So, when I saw it was on Netflix a few years ago now I saved it to my watchlist and then never got back to it. Therefore, last week when I saw The Artist would be leaving Netflix that very night, I decided to not overthink it for once and pressed play.
What followed was everything I hoped for. Longtime readers of this blog will know I’m a fan of silent films, old friends will remember I even made a few in high school, which honestly was as much due to the poor quality of the sound that my video camera could record at the time in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I’ve written in the past in this blog about how Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush touched me and spoke to me of a loneliness I truly can relate to now in grad school, and I think that blog post speaks to the unspoken power of silent films to sing directly to human emotions through visual cues only. The visual metaphors that abound in The Artist are loud and clear, as if shouting from the rooftops, yet they are iconic in their heritage from the theatre and ballet, art forms that served as some of the roots of silent film itself.
The Artist tells the story of a Douglas Fairbanks type of leading man, George Valentin, played artfully by Jean Dujardain, whose career playing the same mustachioed hero over and over again is eclipsed by the coming of sound in 1927. Into the scene walks the young extra Peppy Miller, played joyfully by Bérénice Bejo, whose own career takes off as Valentin’s descends. Valentin has many opportunities to maintain his triumph through the transition to sound, yet his fear of change and his pride make him tumble from the heights of stardom like Icarus at the roaring heat of the Sun’s rays melting the wax on his silent wings.
The film’s message is one of emotional turmoil in distress, Valentin falls as far as he can in life, almost to the grave itself, yet he continues to have people around him who love and care deeply for him. Among them first and foremost is Jack, his beloved dog and quite likely best friend, played terrifically by Uggie, a Parson Russell Terrier, who stayed with Valentin through thick and thin, even saving his life on the odd occasion. I want to pause for a minute here and acknowledge some of the discussion that was going on in 2011 about giving Uggie recognition for his work on The Artist, even perhaps an Honorary Oscar. One quote that made me do a spit take with laughter from a spokesman at the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) was quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying that Uggie wasn’t eligible because he wasn’t “a human being” and because of “his unique motivation as an actor was sausages.” I will say, I bet if we didn’t need to work for wages to survive there’d be many a person out there who might consider a good sausage a nice reward for a day’s work. Speaking of that, I need to add some brats to my shopping list …
Anyway, The Artist is special in that it was a silent film made 84 years after the development of talking pictures. It is also one of the few fully black-and-white pictures to be made in the last few decades. Another one of note that I quite liked was the 2020 David Fincher film Mank about Herman J. Mankiewicz and the creation of Citizen Kane in 1939 and 1940. As such The Artist is a silent film made with 84 years of extra technical know-how. From what I could tell as a silent film buff the creators of The Artist did a great deal to make it authentic to the period it sought to depict from the lighting to the camera angles, to the profound metaphors through set design, such as the moments when Valentin finds himself looking into mirrors and seeing what he’s become or the way in which the creators seemed to be using new yet old-looking ways of telling their story.
When sound does appear in The Artist it’s as if an alien invasion has commenced. George Valentin’s first contact with sound comes halfway through the film in the form of a series of defiant noises that terrify the silent star. Later though once comfortable with it the sound returns and becomes embedded in the world of The Artist as something ordinary and wonderful at the same time.
This week I’m reflecting on the 2011 Best Picture winner “The Artist” and introducing a new segment to The Wednesday Blog in an interview with my friend Alex Brisson about the film.
Alex Brisson’s website: https://www.alexbrisson.com
Star Trek: The Original Siblings Podcast: https://stosibspod.buzzsprout.com
Brissflix: https://www.alexbrisson.com/brissflix
The musical interlude in this episode comes from “April Showers” recorded by Gene Rodimich’s Orchestra in 1922. Listen to the full version here.
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 