The Silent Treatment

My very first post in this blog back in 2008 (“WALL-E: The Return of Visual Storytelling”) was about visuals taking a backseat to dialogue in cinema. This is not always the case, but so often it is, many have lost their ability to read images. WALL-E, inspired by the great silent comics, may have been low on dialogue, but it was loaded with visual invention. The images told the story. Furthermore, WALL-E was a satire about where our world is headed; remember the overweight people zipping around on comfy electronic chairs, sucking nutrients through straws as they watched futuristic televisions? Technology had reached a point where humans were no longer required to act, so they became passive.

That is precisely what the majority of television shows and movies have done to the masses. We have gotten used to being babied, spoon-fed everything through expository dialogue. Viewers are content to be passive, as only rarely are they asked to exercise their brain at the theater. I am reminded of the captain in WALL-E who struggled to walk; his legs were like jelly because he had never put them to use! So when a film comes along demanding an active viewer, requiring those brain cells to kick-start and get moving, scores of people inevitably dismiss it off-hand. It has become a burden to think at the movies. After all, it is much easier to line the coffers of Michael Bay (Bad Boys, Armageddon, Transformers, etc.), whose entire reputation depends on an audience averse to intelligent thought.

The visual language of film may have been developed during the silent era, when images were the language, but the two were never mutually exclusive. Sound was not intended to be the death knell of visual storytelling; film is an inherently visual medium, after all. Screenwriters used to live by the rule, “Never say it if you can show it.” The first five minutes of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film, Rear Window, offer a textbook example of how it should be done.

The camera pans across an apartment courtyard, giving us a voyeuristic peek at various characters going about their business; a man shaving, a sexy woman dancing, kids playing in water across the street, etc. Eventually, we pull back to see James Stewart at rest in his apartment, sweat beading up on his forehead. It's a hot day. The camera continues downward, revealing his leg in a cast. We see a busted camera on a nearby table, and several pictures of a car crash at a big race. In one of them, the airborne car seems to be coming directly at the cameraman. Another frame holds a negative print of a woman, Grace Kelly, while the positive print adorns a fashion magazine cover nearby.

Not a single word is spoken in that first five minutes (save for a brief radio advertisement), yet we are told so much. We know the heat is stifling, we know Stewart is a photographer who was injured at a race, we know his wife or girlfriend works for a fashion magazine, and we have been well acclimated to the voyeur's role we will assume for much of the film. For a more recent example of perfect visual storytelling, look no further than this four-and-a-half minute montage in Pixar's 2009 film, Up. Filled with character and raw emotion, despite lacking one word of dialogue or a single sound effect, Pixar could make an amazing silent film were they so inclined.

With the power to reveal so much, it's a shame when an image reveals so little. There was a time when the positioning of characters within the frame would indicate almost everything about their relationship. There was a time when a character's mood would be subtly reflected in the way shadows fell across the screen, a time when changes in the weather foretold something ominous, joyous, or anything in-between. When people watched Citizen Kane they understood the symbolism of the massive windows when Orson Welles walked deep into the frame; he was losing his vast media empire and felt as miniscule as those windows suddenly made him look (see above). Audiences knew when a character felt lost or isolated in their life, they knew when a marriage was falling apart. They understood that a shot of a train entering a dark tunnel, moments after a couple's passionate embrace, meant penetration of another sort was going on.

Despite the current state of mainstream filmmaking, there are always a handful of movies a year determined to buck the trend. In 2011 we got several, including Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, Lars von Trier's Melancholia, etc. Two films, in particular, were crafted as “love letters” to the innovative magic of early, visual cinema. Like WALL-E, Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist and Martin Scorsese's Hugo are absolutely indebted to and passionate about silent film.

The Artist is a silent film, in fact, with an original musical score by Ludovic Bource (the 2012 Golden Globe winner for Best Score). Hazanavicius went all out with his homage, filming in black-and-white, 22 frames-per-second, and the 1.33:1 aspect ratio (a frame only slightly wider than it is tall). He cheats a bit, playing the song “Pennies From Heaven” over a montage and including two other instances of sound. Still, for all intents and purposes, this is a brand spankin' new silent picture.

The use of Bernard Herrmann's iconic 1958 Vertigo score has proven much more stupefying than any intrusion of speech or sound effects. Hitchcock fans will notice immediately, but I strongly disagree with Kim Novak's argument. The rest of The Artist is clear evidence, Hazanavicius simply adores the classics. The Vertigo music was a temporary track, which ultimately could not be improved upon for the scene. There is no cause for alarm, The Artist will not replace Vertigo in anyone's memory. Herrmann's music is still about the love and obsession Scotty Ferguson feels for Madeleine Elster.

The Artist begins in 1927, an amazing year for silent pictures (Sunrise, Metropolis, The Unknown, Seventh Heaven, Wings, etc.), and for the world's first sound film, The Jazz Singer. We meet George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent star in the mold of Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino, as he attends the Hollywood premiere of A Russian Affair, the latest in his seemingly endless string of box office hits. Afterward, a lively aspiring actress in the crowd, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), stumbles into Valentin for a “meet cute” and the press eats it up.

Valentin runs into Peppy again when she comes to the studio for an audition, and convinces his boss (John Goodman) to give her a small role in their new movie. Unfortunately, sound features are all the rage, and Valentin refuses to change with the times. Instead, he goes independent, sinking his own fortune into a new silent film. From here we get echoes of Singin' in the Rain (1952) and A Star is Born (1937, 1954, 1976, take your pick), with Peppy rising fast as Valentin takes a fall.

The Artist is filled with lovely moments, including a nod to Citizen Kane's justly famous breakfast table montage. Peppy has an adorable scene with Valentin's coat, and the dog is just adorable, period. Valentin's nightmare is inventive and humorous, as the simplest of sounds are magnified, causing him to scream in terror. At one point, Valentin passes Peppy on a flight of stairs. It's almost a throw-away moment, but those who take notice of the scene's dynamics will receive a simple, visual reinforcement of the film's theme. The final line of the movie is a nice touch, succinctly explaining Valentin's reluctance to make sound films, but then again, it makes me wonder if Maurice Chevalier existed in this version of Hollywood.

There are those who have criticized Hazanavicius for making a silent, they like to cry “gimmick”. Others accuse The Artist of being a poor substitute for the films it imitates. The gimmick claim is bogus; silent films are a unique medium, in my opinion. What's wrong with using a vastly different method to tell a story? In a perfect world I believe we would still have silents and more black-and-white films being produced, along with the latest blockbusters. I concede, however, that I would take dozens of old silent films over The Artist. In no way does that comment berate Hazanavicius' film, it simply reflects the incredible quality of the real deal.

Still, when I walked out of The Artist I felt reinvigorated. It was a packed house, yet a pin could be heard dropping in there. The audience was enraptured by the film, bursting into applause at the end. By virtue of being new and shiny (winning the Golden Globe for Best Picture and Best Actor won't hurt), The Artist has successfully drawn crowds to what is essentially a nostalgia piece. Hopefully, those in attendance have been inundated by one thought: “Hey, these silent films are pretty damn good!” If The Artist inspires just a few people to look back at the classics with an open mind and newfound respect, its duty would be done. Something tells me it will be more than “a few”.

Filled with all the latest tools of the trade (slick 3D, seamless computer animation, etc.), Hugo takes an entirely different road to reach the same destination. It celebrates one man in particular; the great cinematic pioneer, Georges Méliès. Based on Brian Selznick's book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the story takes place in and around a Parisian train station in 1931. A young orphan, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), operates the station clocks as his drunken uncle had done. He is regularly on the run from the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), and occasionally steals a few items from a toy maker who happens to be Méliès (Ben Kingsley). Hugo needs these mechanisms to repair an automaton his father (Jude Law) had been working on before he passed. He believes a hidden message has been left within.

SPOILER ALERT: The big mystery that Hugo and his friend Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) solve is that of Méliès' hidden past. It is historically accurate that once Méliès' star faded, the French army took about four hundred of his original film prints and melted them down to create boot heels. Méliès also burned a bunch of the negatives in a rage, believing them worthless. In his later years he ran a toy shop in the Montparnasse train station, where we meet him in Scorsese's film. The children discover all of these secrets and come across a man whose greatest inspiration is Méliès. Together they convince Méliès that his work was vital and glorious. The entire film, and it's a very good one, boils down to the healing of one man's heart.

Film fans will love the recreation of Méliès studio, made of glass so the sets could be properly lit. There are those of us who will instantly recognize the films being made there, including Kingdom of the Fairies from 1903. What a great touch it was, seeing the primitive camera filming an underwater scene through an aquarium, with lobsters being dropped in the foreground. It's a simple illusion, but at a time when the medium was so young, it seems positively ingenious. Méliès was a magician prior to making films, and his pictures are like little miracles. Narratively, they are not on the level of later silent films, but if any one man invented the language of cinema before D.W. Griffith, it was Méliès.

After watching Hugo, I hoped to see a renewed interest in Méliès', and my wish came true! For a few weeks following Hugo's release, this DVD set of his films was sold out everywhere. The company responsible for the DVDs had to issue an apology, they simply were not prepared for the sudden increase in demand. I imagine that, for Martin Scorsese, this reward tasted even sweeter than his Golden Globe for Best Director.

Both The Artist and Hugo are incredibly refreshing in this day and age. They are distinctly visual films that go well beyond the superficial, special effects-laden definition of “visual”. They are family friendly (the undeserved PG-13 rating for The Artist shows the absurdity of the MPAA). One is a French film, the other takes place in France. Each has a strong admiration for silent cinema, and indeed all cinema.

Generally I'm not big on 3D (now there is a gimmick), but I must say Scorsese and his cinematographer, Robert Richardson, get it right. There was magic in the air when Scorsese gave us the moon. For one hundred and ten years the “face of the moon” in Méliès Voyage to the Moon, one of the most iconic images in film history, has been locked away in two dimensions. For one brief, exhilarating moment that very moon breaks free of the screen. Right then, the smile on my face could probably be seen from the moon too.