I finally got to see Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist, his delightful romantic comedy about the end of the transition between the silent and sound era, and it is every bit as good as its reputation. The film’s conceit is that it is shot as a silent film in black-and-white; this sort of thing could easily have become gimmicky, but far from it. Hazanavicius, who previously did several parodies of spy films, which like The Artist starred Jean Dujardin, shows a pitch perfect understanding of the style of late 20s and early 30s Hollywood filmmaking. For example, take the image below of Bérénice Bejo and Jean Dujardin reflected in the mirror, which would easily evoke a feeling of déjà vu to any number of people familiar with the silent era — and it does so without affectation. The same goes for the sound stage sets and costumes, though one policeman’s hat seemed a bit off.

The story revolves around silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), who is somewhat modeled after Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (there is a scene where he watches one of his old films, which is Fairbanks’ The Mark of Zorro [1920]), though we initially see him at the premiere of a film that harks back to Louis Feuillade’s French serial, Fantômas (1913). He has a brief encounter with Peppy Miller (Bejo), an aspiring actress, who goes on to be a major star in talkies, while he’s too much of an artist to make the transition to sound, which sets up a sort of A Star is Born plot, but again not quite. In any case, it’s a remarkable film and is very easy to recommend.

This has been a remarkable year for what used to be called FOOFs (Friends of Old Films), what with the 150th birthday of Georges Méliès being celebrated with the restoration of the color version of his Trip to the Moon and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, and The Artist. With the Best Picture Oscar race open to 10 nominees, it is easy to believe that both Hugo and The Artist will be nominated in that category, if only for sentimental value. The more interesting race to watch will be whether or not Jean Dujardin will be considered seriously for a Best Actor nod, as after all he did win in that category at Cannes.

Martin Scorcese makes a cameo appearance in Hugo.

Right off the bat, let me say that Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is a wonderful film which I cannot recommend too highly. In a sense,it’s one of those generic, loving homages to the movies that come along every so often; though Hugo is in a class all by itself. While a “family film”  like this may seem off the beaten track for the director of Taxi Driver and executive producer of Boardwalk Empire, it also appears to fit in with much of what he’s been dong throughout his career; in fact, I would venture to say this sort of sums up what he, as an artist, is all about.

Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès and Asa Butterfield as Hugo.

Hugo is about a young boy who encounters the elderly and forgotten film pioneer, Georges Méliès, who has been reduced to running a toy stall in the Montparnasse train station in Paris and  helps spur his rediscovery. (In fact, his rediscovery was prompted by an article published by filmmaker René Clair and Paul Gilson  in the October 15, 1929 issue of La Revue du cinéma; the two are represented in Hugo by the character of René Tabard.)  In the process, Scorsese gets to  show us Méliès at work in his Montreuil studio;  along the way, we also get to see clips from the recent restoration of the hand-colored version of Méliès‘ Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902).

Helen McCrory as Mama Jeanne (Jehanne d’Alcy), Méliès’ second wife, acting in A Trip to the Moon.

In a number of his films, Scorsese has been concerned with various, often unsavory aspects of his and America’s history/identity, such as Gangs of New York  and Mean Streets, while several of his documentaries, especially A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy — have concerned themselves with film history itself. Thus, it seems only natural and fitting that he should make Hugo, a film which seems to sum up how Scorsese sees himself as an artist.

Hugo sort of replaying a scene from Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, which figures in the film’s story.

In terms of production, I was initially a bit put off by the film’s use of 3D stereo, which seemed a bit off-putting with its sometimes obvious multiplane effects; but I soon realized Scorsese, cinematographer Robert Richardson and production designer Dante Ferretti were trying for a style evocative of illustrations for a children’s book; though it does have some resemblance to Brian Selznick’s illustrations for his The Invention of Hugo Cabret, from which the movie was made from, it also had more than a passing resemblance to the look of Robert Zemeckis’ Polar Express, which works better than you might think. Anyway, go see it.

P.S.:  December 2nd — The always useful fxguide website has a nice piece on Hugo’s visual effects here (which is actually the first of two parts), which also lists a number of filmic references made in the movie beyond Safety Last. Incidentally, one of the tasks the effects team had to do was to convert some Méliès footage to 3D, which brought to mind something that Serge Bromberg (whose Lobster Films was responsible for the restoration of the color version of Méliès‘ Le voyage dans la lune noted above) did something quite similar and more interesting. As Kristin Thompson reported last year:

Méliès’s early shorts were often pirated abroad, and a lot of money was being lost in the American market in particular. After the Lubin company flooded that market with bootleg copies of a 1902 film, Méliès struck back by opening his own American distribution office. Separate negatives for the domestic and foreign markets were made by the simple expedient of placing two cameras side by side. The folks at Lobster realized that those cameras’ lenses happened to be about the same distance apart as 3D camera lenses. By taking prints from the two separate versions of a film, today’s restorers could create a simulated 3D copy!

Two 1903 titles–I think that they were The Infernal Cauldron and The Oracle of Delphi–triumphantly showed that the experiment worked. Oracle survived in both French and American copies, and the effect of 3D was delightful. For Cauldron only the second half of the American print has been preserved. Watching the film through red-and-green glasses, you initially saw nothing in your right eye, while the left one saw the image in 2D. Abruptly, though, the second print materialized, and the depth effect kicked in. The films as synchronized  by Lobster looked exactly as if Méliès had designed them for 3D.

The Bioscope, Luke McKernan’s invaluable blog, notes that tomorrow the Cannes Film Festival is presenting “what may be the film restoration to beat all other film restorations — the colour version of Georges Méliès‘ Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902).” While the film is far from being lost,  all known hand-colored prints of the film were considered lost until 1993, when a copy, in very poor shape, was turned up by Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona. The print was then acquired by Serge Bromberg’s Lobster Films, who overcame great odds to restore the film in time for Méliès’ 150th birth year celebration.

Further information on the restoration can be found at the Technicolor Film Foundation website, where you can also download a pdf of a gorgeous 192-page book,  La couleur retrouvée du Voyage dans la Lune/A Trip to the Moon Back in color, in both French and English, from whence came the illustrations for this post.

Bromberg, whose Lobster Films (along with Dave Shepard’s Film Preservation Associates) is one of the most respected brands in classic films on DVD, also serves as Artistic Director of the Annecy International Animation Festival. I only met Bromberg once, during one of his visits to Los Angeles, when he paid a call on animator and film collector Mark Kausler. At the time, Bromberg was elated over his recent discovery of a different cache of Méliès films, which I believe he had turned over to the La Cinémathèque française. Thank God, his enthusiasm for Méliès and his films has not wavered.

In following the events that are happening in Iran, it occurred to me that Marjane Satrapi, the creator of Persopolis, would certainly not be shy about speaking out on the situation. A quick search found that she, along with filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar), a representative for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi abroad, spoke out in front of the European Parliament on June 16th,  seen above YouTube video. A report on the presentation posted on Adnkronos International can be found here.

When I reviewed Michel Ocelot’s latest film, Azur et Asmar in August, I bemoaned the fact that it did not have an American distributor. This has now changed. As Dave Jesteadt wrote me:

I enjoyed reading your thoughts about Michel Ocelot’s Azur and Asmar, and wanted to let you know that the film is indeed getting a theatrical release (albeit limited) stateside. We first showed the film at the 2006 New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival, and our distribution arm, GKIDS, is now aiding the Weinstein Company in doing a theatrical release of the Prince’s Quest version of the film. The film just opened in NYC at the IFC Center, where it sold out all screenings and is getting held over for a second week, and we have added dates in Seattle, Chicago, Hartford, Washington DC and Columbus with hopefully many more to come.

For more information on the film’s American release, as well as the company’s other activies, please check out the GKIDS website.

As I noted in my previous post, I had the chance to see Michel Ocelot’s latest film, Azur et Asmar (France, 2006), in the British release version, Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest, at the Society for Animation Studies conference in England, with the director present. Unfortunately, a lack of 35mm facilities meant a DVD copy was shown, which did not really do justice to the film’s rich imagery. As the film’s American distributor (the Weinstein Company) has bowed out, those in the United States and Canada  will have to bide their time. (Those who have region-free DVD players can get copies from Amazon UK and elsewhere. Hopefully, Korean NTSC DVDs, with English subtitles, may find their way here as well.)

Ocelot, whose short films were a fixture on the international festival circuit, had considerable success with Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), which has also has been made into a successful stage musical in France.  It was this success which enabled him to have a bigger budget and more freedom in making Azur et Asmar; thus,  instead of having the film outsourced to five different countries, production could all be done in Paris.

There is a lot to like in Kirikou, but I felt that it did not sustain the charm and decorative beauty of its early scenes; nevertheless, I enjoy showing a clip from it in my Survey of Animation class, and students inevitably want to see more. (Several always happily buy it on DVD.)

With Kirikou, Ocelot was telling a tale based on West African folklore, something he was familiar with, since he spent much of his childhood in Guinea, the former French colony. This time, reflecting his concern about the problems of North African immigrants in France, he tells a tale of two boys set in the Middle Ages — the fair haired Azur, the son of European nobility, and Asmar, the dark skinned son of Azur’s Muslim nurse; though the nurse raises them as brothers, Azur’s father banishes the nurse and her son; years later, the two are reunited when Azur journeys to Asmar’s homeland, where they both undertake a quest for a Djinn fairy.

The story is really rather thin and the early part of the film seems rather weak. Ocelot, whose silhouette-style favors flat imagery, opted to render his characters with computers, who play out against often lavish hand drawn backgrounds. However, the early scenes in Europe lack the visual interest of the rest of the film, and the early going is somewhat tedious. However, once Azur sets out on his quest, Ocelot’s lavish pictorialism kicks in and it becomes considerably more appealing;  and it is this pictorialism, which is something like a series of Persian miniatures come to life, that carries the film.

(Interestingly, pictorialism of a different sort is also a feature of Kung Fu Panda and WALL-E. In Kung Fu, it certainly enriched a well-executed story, and in WALL-E, it was one of the film’s few saving graces. )

Kirikou‘s international success was not duplicated in the US, probably due to its rather matter-of-fact nudity. This is not a problem with Azur, but according to Ocelot, the Weinstein Company felt no one in America wanted to see the film. Perhaps this was due to its subject matter and the fact that much of the dialog is in Arabic, with no subtitles.  Ocelot was visibly upset about the Weinstein Company’s actions and hoped someone else would pick it up for US distribution. Let’s hope so, but given the large number of European animated movies which fail to get a theatrical airing here, I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, here’s the British trailer for the film.