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Canberra Today 15°/18° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: “The Artist” (PG) *** and a half

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.

Plot-wise it offers little new. The lack of spoken dialogue boosts its high nostalgia values. Its images, reminding us of the artistry of cinematographers working in monochrome, give the film great charm.

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

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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