84th Academy Awards · 2012
The Artist
Directed byCooked up by Michel Hazanavicius
“A breath of fresh vintage air.”
“No talking, all aura. The dog ate fr 🐶🎬”
The storyThe lore 📖
Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break.
Hollywood, 1927: George Valentin is the biggest silent movie star around, and his dog is honestly the GOAT. Then talking movies drop and suddenly George is giving NPC while rising dancer Peppy Miller enters her superstar era. Fun fact: this movie itself is almost totally silent and black-and-white, which is a whole flex 🎬🐶
What critics & audiences sayThe receipts 🧾
Tomatometer
95%
Fresh
#26 of 98 winnersFamous linesLines living rent free
Al Zimmer: Perfect! Could you give me just one more?
George: With pleasure.
I won't talk! I won't say a word!
Out with the old, in with the new. Make way for the young! That's life!
If that's the future you can have it!
Doris: I am unhappy, George.
George: So are millions of us.
We have to talk, George. Why do you refuse to talk?
There's one thing we could try. Trust me.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Filming locationsWhere they shot it 📍
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Red Studios
Hollywood, Los Angeles
Its soundstages were used and the lot doubled for the fictional Kinograph Studios, with its Lillian Way gate as the entrance.
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Bradbury Building
Downtown Los Angeles, California
The landmark provided the setting for the film's distinctive staircase sequence.
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Hollywood
Los Angeles, California
Every scene was shot in Los Angeles, primarily in Hollywood, along with downtown theaters, restaurants and houses.
Fun factsFacts that go hard 🤓
- The Artist was the first non-American, non-British film ever to win Best Picture, and the first mainly silent winner since Wings at the very first Academy Awards in 1929. It was also the first 100% black-and-white winner since The Apartment.Wikipedia · Introduction
- Although presented in black-and-white, The Artist was actually shot in color, and it was filmed at 22 frames per second instead of the standard 24 to recreate the slightly sped-up look of 1920s silent films.Wikipedia · Filming
- Vertigo star Kim Novak said she felt her "body of work" had been violated by the film's use of Bernard Herrmann's love theme from Vertigo in its climax. Michel Hazanavicius replied that the music was licensed: "We paid for that, we asked for that."Wikipedia · Kim Novak controversy
- The tap-dance number that closes the film took seventeen takes, and Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo spent five months studying tap. Dujardin said: "in the first week it's fun, the fifth week it's a little boring, at the end it's thrilling."Wikipedia · Filming
- Jean Dujardin's win made him the first French actor ever to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.Wikipedia · Introduction
- Though a French production, The Artist was shot entirely in Los Angeles, including in a house where Mary Pickford once lived, with the Bradbury Building downtown providing the film's distinctive staircase sequence.Wikipedia · Filming
- Michel Hazanavicius said his long-held wish to make a silent film was at first not taken seriously; producers only became interested after the financial success of his OSS 117 spy-film pastiches starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo.Wikipedia · Development
- Throughout the 35-day shoot, Michel Hazanavicius played music from classic Hollywood films while the actors performed their silent scenes.Wikipedia · Filming
- The only song with sung lyrics in the soundtrack is "Pennies from Heaven," an anachronism, since it was written in 1936 while the film is set between 1927 and 1932.Wikipedia · Music
- The screenplay took four months to write and was principally inspired by the 1928 silent comedy Show People, while the hero George Valentin drew chiefly on swashbuckling star Douglas Fairbanks.Wikipedia · Development