The Artist is a comedic take on the romance between Greta Garbo and silent screen star John Gilbert. Gilbert's career was destroyed by the coming of sound and his alcoholism so naturally that would make a funny movie. This isn't really a silent comedy, it's just someone's idea of what a silent comedy was like back in the good old days. It takes more than just shooting the film in the old film ratio with black and white to make this a silent film. The Artist lacks the special technique that a Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd could bring to a pantomime performance.
For a French film, the supporting cast is weirdly loaded with American supporting characters like John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller and character actor Ed Lauter, none of them really make much of an impression, and I'm not even sure exactly why they are in this film other than to evoke some kind of memory of old Hollywood.
This film is just incredibly slight, yet it's getting good reviews by many critics and winning many awards. Apparently none of them have seen any Ernest Lubitsch or King Vidor silent films
100 minutes, written by Michel Hazanavicius.
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