Movies celebrating Movies

Recently, I saw two movies that, although completely different, have a a lot in common: Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese and The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius. The first one is a 3-D movie, whereas the latter is a black and white silent movie. Nonetheless, both of them take place in the first half of the 20th century (one in Paris and the other in Hollywood) and both are tributes to the cinema as an Art. This is particularly interesting in a time when the film industry seems to be in decadence and there is some uncertainty about its future. The industry can re-create itself, modernize itself, but the essence is always the same. That is, movies are there to tell stories in various ways, independently on how the technology (which is a support) evolves. 

And this is so true in The Artist, in which the main character is trying to fight against the modernisation of the films in the early 20's, when they start to introduce sound to the pictures. He thinks silent movies will prevail and that talking movies will be a fiasco. He was obviously wrong. The public also evolves and likes novelty. The interesting thing is that we are currently living a similar situation, with the introduction of 3-D pictures. A few years ago some people would say that nobody would ever like to watch a movie with those not very comfortable glasses. However, what we are seeing nowadays is that more and more films are beings released in 3-D and even 3-D televisions are already available in the market. 

The technology of film-making can evolve, nonetheless, what really remains is the importance of the story. This is what movies are all about. Movies tell stories. They can either be fantastic or realistic. But, they certainly make people dream, travel, imagine, laugh, cry, be frighten... This is and always has been what differentiate a good movie from a bad one. You can be using the latest technology available, however if the story is not good, there's no 3-D feature or special effect that will support your film. 

Hugo is a magical film. The story is obviously a fantasy. But it is actually based on some real facts. Independently on the story (that I really liked), what moved me the most is how Martin Scorsese tells the story of the cinema. We see in the movie one of the very first film that had been shown in theaters, which was a very short scene of a train arriving to the station - Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, by the Lumiere Brothers. At the time, people would scream and hide their faces when they saw the train arriving, because they actually thought the train would come out of the screen. In Hugo, we see that same scene, but with the 3-D effect the train actually comes out of the screen. This is just brilliant!

In The Artist, Hazanavicius brings back a whole different way of watching a movie. I think it must have been quite a challenge and it's very audacious to make a silent movie nowadays. The public is now so used to fast scenes, full of action and sound all the time. All the characters have to be clever, fast thinkers, full of witty lines. So, in my opinion, through his film, Hazanavicius also challenges his audience. He's testing our concentration and our senses. As spectators, we end up reacting to the silence of the actors in front of us in a different way than when we are just passively listening to a dialogue. I had already seen some of the old silent movies, but never on a big screen and never with such a good image quality. Overall, I think it was really refreshing.

And just a little parenthesis on education here: watching a silent movie nowadays is actually a good way to teach the audience to remain in silence during the entire session and restraining people from making noises with their food and drinks. Movies still deserve some respect.

As I was browsing the web to find a nice image to illustrate my post, I found this critic of "The Artist" from The New Yorker that I thought was very interesting.