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Why make a full-length black-&-white, silent movie these days and what prompts Santa Fe Film Festival to program it on their opening night? Good questions deserve thoughtful answers. I\u2019m going to guess right off that it\u2019s not a nostalgia trip.<\/p>\n
Writer and director of \u201cThe Artist\u201d, Michel Hazanavicius, made a name for himself in France with a series of comedies spoofing the spy genre. Whatever gave him the audacity to create his latest one in the style of a century ago I applaud him. It appears to have paid off. The movie gathers praise wherever it plays.<\/p>\n
Santa Fe\u2019s own multi-Emmy award-winning writer\/producer Kirk Ellis says this about \u201cThe Artist\u201d: \u201cMany people\u2014from Mel Brooks to Pedro Almodovar\u2014have attempted to recreate the silent era (with varying degrees of success), but Michel Hazanavicius’ \u2018The Artist\u2019 is the reel deal: a pitch-perfect, honest-to-goodness silent movie that’s so precise in its visual language, so accurate in its details, that by the time it\u2019s over you’ll forget you’re watching a \u2018modern\u2019 movie and will swear you’ve just seen an undiscovered gem from the late-20s MGM vaults.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plot involves a silent film star whose career is threatened by the arrival of \u201ctalking pictures\u201d and an aspiring dancer that revives his hopes only to eventually overshadow him. Hazanavicius\u2019s lovely wife Berenicia Bejos is cast opposite handsome leading man Jean Dujardan who received the best actor nod at Cannes for this role. The cast is rounded out with Penelope Ann Miller, Missi Pyle, James Cromwell and John Goodman.<\/p>\n
With this movie there is some interesting cross-fertilization going on. From a New Media perspective, making a modern day silent film is an example of an analog form migrating to the digital frontier. That\u2019s ass-backwards procreation like a salmon swimming up stream. Are we witnessing a fascinating fluke here or future fashion?<\/p>\n
A whole other discussion could be had over whether Mr. Hazanavicius drops dialog from his movie as a reaction to the barrage of glib spin and sound bites that are continuously hurled at us from media maniacs.<\/p>\n
Silent films succeed by their ability to tell a story with pictures alone. Hazanavicius starts with a solid script\u2013impeccably structured and ingeniously crafted\u2013that turns the manner in which he tells the story into a dimension of the story itself.\u00a0 It soaks effortlessly into the imagination this way.<\/p>\n
The best movies from the silent era are still as entertaining as when they were first released. In many cases they\u2019ve actually improved, like fine wine. Esteem for directors like Griffith, Eisenstein, Pabst, Chaplin, Lang, and Murnau has also increased over time.<\/p>\n
Silent filmmaking is such good story telling discipline that modern directors should be required to make at least one silent picture. Evidence put forth in the multiplex these days suggests that many of them can\u2019t succeed even with the added advantages of language, background tone and human voices.<\/p>\n
This story\u2019s absence of sound and color achieves what words and added hues never could. Festival Director Diane Schneier Perrin has this to say about it, \u201cA festival favorite, this crowd pleaser is headed for Oscar glory!\u201d Even if \u201cThe Artist\u201d succeeded modestly, it would be more interesting to watch than those summer blockbusters already decomposing in the ocean bed of pop culture after barely a splash on the surface.<\/p>\n
Expect \u201cThe Artist\u201d to reach greater depths because the only thing that could make a filmmaker go for broke like this, besides considerable brass in pocket, is a tremendous passion and devotion to his art form and all its unexplored roots and branches.<\/p>\n
The Santa Fe Film Festival sets an intriguing tone for the festival by projecting a feature length black and white silent film for opening night. By the time the credits role I predict we will all agree once again that silence is golden.<\/p>\n