Essay: ‘The Artist,’ an old-fashioned movie utterly of its time

“The Artist” arrives just in time for Christmas giving. Finally, a movie that comes practically gift-wrapped with a big red bow, suitable for every recipient, regardless of age, temperament or taste. The silent, black-and-white film, by French director Michel Hazanavicius, is one of the movies a critic can recommend to just about anyone, from snooty cineastes, who will adore Hazanavicius’s constant references to the legend and lore of classic films, to harried filmgoers who just want something amusing and entertaining to see with parents, kids, grandparents or shy second dates.

Indeed, I hereby claim “The Artist” as my get-out-of-jail-free movie for 2011, the film I can recommend to those readers who were disappointed by my admiration of the graphically violent “Drive,” or the gentleman in Silver Spring who left “The Descendants” in disgust, or the lovely woman who left an impassioned voice mail defending “J. Edgar.” This one’s for all of you! God bless us, everyone!

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 The Style critics were driven half-mad by this year’s Best Of selections. The movie and theater offerings were so good 10 picks weren’t enough, they fretted. Visual arts were scattered, and TV faves are so, well, personal. Nevertheless, they did it.

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 There’s drama and comedy for all ages throughout this holiday season’s film offerings, which include some of the most prestigious releases of the year.

Hazanavicius, who’s famous in France for a series of detective comedies, has fashioned a lavish, loving valentine to early Hollywood with “The Artist,” which stars his frequent leading man Jean Dujardin as a silent-movie star named, appropriately enough, George Valentin.

As “The Artist” opens, George attends the soignee premiere of his new thriller “A Russian Affair,” in which the pencil-mustached actor engages in all manner of Errol Flynn-worthy derring-do, assisted by his faithful (and preternaturally talented) Jack Russell terrier. Ingratiating, vain and an incorrigible ham, George has Hollywood — or “Hollywoodland” as it was known then — in the palm of his soft, well-manicured hand, at least until the talkies arrive.

It turns out George isn’t well-suited for sound pictures, not least because of his mugging, archaically theatrical acting style. But the talkies are perfectly suited to a vivacious ingenue named Peppy Miller (played by Hazanavicius’s radiant wife, Berenice Bejo), who crosses paths with George, first as a fan, then as an extra on the set of his new movie, “A German Affair.”

In 1929, just as Wall Street crashes, George’s studio, Kinograph, stops making silent movies. It’s fitting that the next time he meets Peppy, on Kinograph’s hivelike main stairway, she’s on her way up and he’s on his way down.

Hazanavicius stages that scene, like so many others in “The Artist,” with deftness, ingenuity and sensitivity, pulling back the camera to take in the meticulously choreographed screen action, then pushing in to capture the expressiveness of his terrific acting ensemble, which includes John Goodman as Kinograph’s blustery chief, James Cromwell as George’s faithful chauffeur and Penelope Ann Miller as the hopelessly bored Mrs. Valentin. To paraphrase Norma Desmond speaking of the silent era in “Sunset Boulevard” — one of the myriad movies to which “The Artist” pays affectionate homage — actors had faces then. As Dujardin and Bejo prove in their funny, subtle, affecting performances, they still do.