The Artist

1.     Camera Work

The camera work used in The Artist is very similar to early sound films, the most of which is the framing of particular scenes. Most movies from that era focused on the faces of the actor and rely heavily on their expressions to communicate their emotions, as well as have very little background in the shot. The Artist follows this style exceptionally well, and it is hard to distinguish how the film was created so recently. One give away that the film was made recently is when the wife sees her husband being kissed by a girl on the front of the newspaper, the camera starts with the small picture of the headline and zooms out to show the whole scene. Back then this was very uncommon, most films would end a scene with the close up, not start it out with one.

2.     Sound & Music

The easiest reason for this being similar to an early sound film is the fact that it is accompanied by a musical score and it relies on this score to communicate the emotions of a scene. The music matches to the scenes of the film very well like most films from this era. During a scene where Peppy is caught kissing George’s jacket, the music quickly heightens as she realizes she has been caught. When it comes to sound and music I had a lot of trouble telling that the film was made in 2011, but one case is when the score does cut off the film is actually silent. It was hard for older films to be completely silent because the equipment was so loud.

3.     Dialogue & Speech

The Artist does resemble films from the early sound era in that you cannot hear the voices of the actors and the amount of actual dialogue in the movie is scarce. Movies nowadays often have constant talking between characters and silence is saved for dramatic parts, the Artist relies on the actors to portray their thoughts and emotions through kinesis. I knew the film was from 2011 with a simple middle finger gesture in the first part of the film, old films were not outgoing enough to show this in their films.

4.     Editing

There two distinct scenes in the Artist where they transition to another scene, one by folding the image over the old to create he new scene, and another by blacking out the screen to the middle then opening it back up to a new scene. This was very common for the early sound film era. It is clear the Artist was made in 2011 because of the sharp clarity of in all the scenes; they could not achieve this back in early sound films.

5.     Special Effects

Although I have never seen this in other early sound films, when George is at the bar he imagines a little version of himself telling him to change his ways as he is not doing anything with his life since he is no longer acting. They also show George being shocked in a clip of one if his films, the electric waves are faked but add to the scene. I could tell it was from 2011 because they did not yet have the technology to have people imagine little versions of themselves, and attempt to swat them away to no prevail.

6.     Genre Codes & Conventions

This film has a classic silent era plot, the man who has it all suddenly loses it and is torn between his crippling professional life and the new love he feels for a woman that is not his wife. He is emotionally beat with his personal and professional life and almost took his own life only to be rescued at the last second by his new founded lover. I new this film was from 2011 because they almost have a suicide occur, this was a much more sensitive topic back then and it surely would not have been in an older film.

7.     Acting

The acting in The Artist was very impressive as new age actors had to travel back in time and rely on their ability to show their emotions. This means many close ups and they must be able to change expressions based off the scene in an instant. The film was clearly from 2011 because well first off, I knew the actors in the film, and second, at the end of the film all sound can be heard and they act as if it is a modern movie for the last 30 seconds or so.