MICHAEL Hazanavicius’s re-telling of how sound-on-film disrupted the careers of many silent cinema stars, offers homages to “Singin’ in the Rain” and the Fred and Ginger song-and-dance movies that continue to delight us on late-night TV.

Handsome in the style of the great ham actors of the silent era, some of whom successfully made the change, French comedian Jean Dujardin plays heart-throb George, a Luddite whose silent films career goes down the plug-hole when he refuses to embrace the new technology.

As Peppy, the ingénue essential for every screw-ball comedy, whose career in song-and-dance movies carries her to Big Star status, Berenice Bejo looks good. In success, Peppy never forgets her debt to George’s original career-boosting influence.

The inevitably heavily derivative plot does not detract from the film’s merits, although, choreography-wise, George and Peppy’s closing dance routine in the style of Fred and Ginger is but a pallid remembrance.  Which may disappoint but, like the entire film, should not surprise.

At Dendy and Greater Union

"The Artist"