Anybody seen this?

[uwe]

It's a lovely feel-good movie and I swear you won't miss any language at all. Captures the era so succinctly (as Dave will no doubt confirm!).



John Goodman was made for this movie.



The film took only thirty days to shoot, but the main actors took six months of tap dancing lessons (every day).

[westen44]

I never got a chance to see it, but eventually hope to.  The 20s decade has a mystique to it which has always appealed to me. 

[jumbodbassman]

one of my favorite Cable TV shows is from the same era.  Boardwalk Empire but certainly from the darker gangster side of life

[maxschrek]

The wife and I wanted to see a movie one afternoon while this was playing (after it had won best picture) and we were underwhelmed, to say the least, at the selection playing at our local multiplex cinema. After painfully trying to decide which was the lesser of the twelve potentially boring evils we finally agreed that The Artist couldn't be all bad if it won best picture. Boy were we in for a rare treat! Mesmerizing is the first word that comes to mind, also, it's really "sweet" in a not cheesey way. Best mainstream film I've seen in a long time.

I wonder if this was loosely based on Rudy Valentino, 'cause the same thing happened to him when the talkies came about with English not being his first language and all?

[uwe]

With a name like Max Schreck you are stuck in a Fritz Murnau time warp anyway!



I'm sure they were prodding at Valentino (though the character also had something Errol Flynn'ish and even Clark Gable'ish), his sorry fate at the advent of "talkies" just etched that seismic change into collective memory. Valentino had supposedly a high voice though he doesn't sound that high on these recordings here (the only ones known to exist of him, singing or talking)



whicht didn't go together with his romantic lover image. You know what chicks dig, let's face it.

[drbassman]

I have to say we really enjoyed the Artist.  Not only did it transport us back to another era in motion pictures and time, it was so well done.  Acting and directing was tops!

[uwe]

Yup, it was cute in an unaffected way.

[Dave W]

Haven't seen it, not interested.

[Basvarken]

six months of tap dancing lessons (every day).

Okay when I read tap dancing I knew enough. Definitely not a movie that will make me feel good.  


This movie did.
Make me lough out loud several times

[dadagoboi]

[quote author=uwe link=topic=7380.msg118294#msg118294 date=1350933889

I'm sure they were prodding at Valentino, his sorry fate at the advent of "talkies" just etched that seismic change into collective memory. Valentino had supposedly a high voice though he doesn't sound that high on these recordings here (the only ones known to exist of him, singing or talking)
which didn't go together with his romantic lover image. You know what chicks dig, let's face it.
[/quote]

Nice theory...unfortunately VALENTINO DIED before the advent of talkies.  The Jazz Singer was released in October 1927.

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926)

[Big_Stu]

When it first toured the UK a cinema in a city that was once a "European City of Culture"  was snowed under with complaints that the sound-track was broken.

[uwe]

[quote author=uwe link=topic=7380.msg118294#msg118294 date=1350933889

I'm sure they were prodding at Valentino, his sorry fate at the advent of "talkies" just etched that seismic change into collective memory. Valentino had supposedly a high voice though he doesn't sound that high on these recordings here (the only ones known to exist of him, singing or talking)
which didn't go together with his romantic lover image. You know what chicks dig, let's face it.


Nice theory...unfortunately VALENTINO DIED before the advent of talkies.  The Jazz Singer was released in October 1927.

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926)

True, but there were already short motion pictures with sound as early as 1923 (screened in Nrw York), it wasn't an overnight thing, industry was preparing for it. But who knows, had he survived, he might have made the transformation just like Laurel & Hardy did. A lot of the issues the old silent movie stars had came not so much from their voices but from the overacting they had adopted in the absence of a voice track and found hard to leave behind.