Simon Dillon reviews the film

As has been observed elsewhere, The Artist would make a fine double bill with Martin Scorsese's Hugo for anyone who has ever fallen in love with cinema.

Whilst Scorsese's film dealt with the birth of cinema, using modern visual effects technology to comment in an ironic way on the earlier pioneers of film (George Melies pictures re-invented as 3D spectacle for instance), The Artist is - on the surface at least - a much more straightforward piece. It's an almost entirely silent, black and white picture shot in the original Academy aspect ratio. Whilst this at first might seem a bold choice for director Michel Hazanavicius, 100 minutes later, delighted audiences will no doubt conclude, why not? Why not have black and white silent pictures alongside modern CGI blockbusters? It's simply another artistic tool to use when appropriate.

For those who have never discovered the joys of silent cinema, The Artist (like Hugo) provides a tremendously compelling argument for doing so. The basic plot is a story of love and pride - about George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a somewhat egotistical but essentially good-natured silent movie star whose career comes crashing down following the 1929 stock market collapse and the coming of sound. At the same time, he meets rising star Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), whose career is given a huge boost by sound. Seeing George's slide into misery, lovestruck Peppy helps him from afar, but George's pride provides the biggest obstacle to their mutual happiness. Along the way there are laughs, tears and a very clever dog who almost steals the show.

The plot takes obvious inspiration from Singin in the Rain and A Star is Born, but The Artist is also very much its own beast. This is particularly true of the two points in the film which contain sound; one of which is a superbly realised dream sequence where George finds he cannot speak whilst everything around him - from a comb he drops to a line of giggling chorus girls - can suddenly be heard. This scene - a premonition of the sound revolution in Hollywood - is just one of several moments that mark the film out as something unique and very special.

The cast are all terrific - not just the leads but also Penelope Ann Miller, James Cromwell and John Goodman, as George's wife, chauffeur and studio boss respectively. The screenplay is romantic, funny and on a moral/spiritual level an interesting lesson in the perils of pride.

The one possible nit is one that I am still trying to decide whether indeed it is a nit. For many it won't be. Specifically, the use of Bernard Herrmann's love theme from Vertigo in a key sequence is a bold choice, especially as Vertigo is something of a sacred text amongst film buffs given that it is arguably Hitchcock's masterpiece (and possibly Herrmann's too).

The use of film score from other sources is not uncommon. Peter Weir's seminal The Truman Show contains score from Mishima at a critical moment, and that didn't bother me at all (though unlike Vertigo, I don't much care for Mishima). The Vertigo score has also been used in other works too (notably - and much more directly - in Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys). Regarding its use here, on the one hand it did immediately make me think of Vertigo. On the other hand, the true litmus test is whether or not I found myself wishing I was watching Vertigo instead. I didn't. I wanted to see how The Artist ended, and the use of Herrmann's score complimented the sequence well, for all sorts of reasons I won't spoil here. Yet there is still a niggling part of me that wishes Ludovic Bource (whose excellent original score compliments the rest of the film very well) had composed something else for this sequence.

That said The Artist is an absolute gem of a film. I'm not sure I think it deserves to win Best Picture at the Oscars over Martin Scorsese's magnificent Hugo, but it's pretty much a must-see nonetheless.