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I sat down this evening to watch THE ARTIST on blu-ray. First there were five previews of other films, such as IRON LADY, with blaring soundtrack, which hurt my ears, but I left the volume on my usual setting. Finally the menu arrived, with a snappy bit of music. I selected PLAY, which is what I wanted to do in the first place, and then the film began. The opening credits were fuzzy, on purpose, to simulate how silent films look on VHS. Great! Blu-ray for this? Then I noticed that the soundtrack was set on a very low volume. Checking, yes, it's supposed to be a HD-Master 5.1 soundtrack, but what little sound there is seems to be coming out of the center speaker. There have been Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtracks for silent-film DVDs with much better quality sound. Then, just as I was hunkering down really to dislike this film, here comes the magnificent opening scene with the screening of the fictional RUSSIAN AFFAIR film in a movie theater with live orchestra, followed by the vaudeville routine with the dog. The hostility between the wife and the dog is something palpable. They don't want to share the same man! I did laugh. There then unfolds a series of scenes with really impressive cinematography--and silent films above all are nothing without the cinematographer. About half an hour into the movie is an incredible side-shot of a complex stairwell, with people coming and going, all as a backdrop for a meeting between the two principals. For that scene alone, the film deserves all the honors it can get, and takes a place in film history, IMHO. Yes, I'm still a bit cranky. Sound was introduced into movies in 1927, not in 1929 as the film portrays. The target audience for a film like this will surely know this, so why bend their universe? The HOLLYWOODLAND sign above the studios tell us that this is an alternative universe. Yet the script's conflation of four tragedies on October 25, 1929--financial, marital, professional and personal--seems like piling on. As you see, I try to talk myself into disliking this film. The trouble is, I don't convince myself. Otherwise, why would I be upset that the film was not widescreen, unless I really wanted to see more of it? I think it is a great film that was over-tampered with in post-production. But then, much more drastic things of the same kind happened to GREED, FOOLISH WIVES and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, and yet each of them remains a masterpiece. This is a film I will have to see two or three times to know if it grows on me. At this point I think I might not want to do without it.
AFTER SECOND VIEWING:
Well, I found out after posting my review that the film had won five Oscars--"That's a horse on me!" (Tim Holt in MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS). Give me time--I may catch up with events! (Is this film about me?) Last night I put the blu-ray in to watch a second time. This time I skipped the previews, and that helped get into the film itself, but the menu music should have been turned down to match the volume on the film itself. For the menu music to spoil the opening mood is a frequent fault of DVD and blu-ray mastering. The soundtrack didn't seem so muted this time as before, but still--if the soundtrack won an Oscar, then it is nothing to be shy about. Bring it on! The opening titles were still too fuzzy, but the intertitles within the film itself were crisp and clear. The title character is a little bit of Rudolph Valentino (the name), Douglas Fairbanks (the swashbuckling sequence), Ramon Novarro (the silent star with a foreign accent), Maurice Chevalier (a French accent) and Fred Astaire (the dance routine--very well done). The female lead is closest, I think, to Clara Bow's in WINGS. During the late Twenties, films were featuring fallen women or liberated women, and even Clara Bow had a scene in WINGS where she impersonated a fallen women. But the female lead in THE ARTIST is a "good person" as the butler says. She avoids all their character flaws while combining the awestruck fan, the ambitious understudy, etc. She avoids every cliché and is always a real person at every stage of the film. Her one lapse is talking silly in an interview, but that is certainly an easy temptation to fall into. Even career politicians put their feet into their mouths often enough. I do not consider her having "toy boys" around her a character lapse, since she labels it herself. They are caricatures, but she is not.
About the widescreen issue. There were experiments with widescreen in the late Twenties and early Thirties. One concluding reel of Abel Gance's NAPOLEON (1927) is split-screen, a triptych of images. BAT WHISPERS (1932) was released in both standard and Magnoscope versions. I tried streching THE ARTIST out to the width of my TV, and it worked well nearly all of the time. I felt that it enhanced the effect of the film, except when it chopped off people's foreheads or feet. I hate that sort of thing, so I won't try it again.
So I am sorry that the award-winning soundtrack and award-winning cinematography are kept muted, but the film won the top awards anyway, so who am I to complain? Only two silent films have ever won the Best Film award--THE ARTIST and WINGS, both of them now on fine blu-rays (WINGS skipped DVD altogether and leapfrogged directly from laserdisc to blu-ray). Both films had recorded soundtracks so they weren't entirely soundless. For those of us who love silent film and have collected whatever fragments survive of the film heritage of that era, it is a great thing to see a year like 2012 in which a new silent film takes the top honors. I'm glad I found out before the year was over. I will try to pay better attention next year.
Anyway, after the second viewing, I am sure there will be a third and a fourth and so on. THE ARTIST is an instant classic, and I most assuredly will not want to do without it.
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Reviews with images
Shattered DVD
I was excited to get this movie. I saw it in the theater and loved it. When I opened it I found the case was broken and the DVD inside was shattered. Very irritated.
Top reviews from other countries
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