Michel Hazanavicius had the opportunity to fulfill his dream of a silent era film with his Oscar-winning work ‘The Artist’ and found another enthusiastic colleague in costume designer Mark Bridges, a lifelong fan of silent cinema who remembers seeing classics like ‘Wings’ as a child.

Over the course of his career, Bridges has outfitted films set in virtually every era of the 20th Century, making key contributions to the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s early 20th Century epic ‘There Will Be Blood’ and 70s-era drama ‘Boogie Nights’, and David O. Russell’s 80s boxing drama ‘The Fighter’.

For ‘The Artist’, Bridges happily immersed himself in research, studying silent films, old publicity stills and day-in-the-life candid photos to get a feel for the impeccable tailoring of the era and the elegant clothing that a movie star like George Valentin would have worn in his leisure time.

For the character of Peppy Miller, he found inspiration in early Joan Crawford films, which capture her evolution from average chorus girl to dynamic jazz baby and finally to glamorous star. The silent backstage comedy ‘Show People’ provided clues about what studio workers wore, as did a short film, ‘1925 MGM Studio Tour’, made on the MGM lot.

Bridges found both garments and ideas in Hollywood’s professional costume shops, including The Collection at Western Costume, Motion Picture Costume Company, United American Costume Company, and Palace Costume Company. “Here in Hollywood, we’re really set up to do a movie like ‘The Artist’. I could go to any of these costume shops I regularly use, go through 100 dresses or 50 dresses, and something would read to me ‘Peppy,’” he says.

Milliners freshened and re-blocked hats that had spent decades in boxes. Veteran tailors made duplicate formal wear for Jean Dujardin, and expert shoemakers copied vintage shoes. Some original garments were in fine condition and were used in the film, including a nightgown worn by Bérénice Bejo and a tennis dress Bridges found in a shop.

But many vintage items were too fragile or dilapidated to be worn, and were instead copied and made in new fabrics. Sometimes old was incorporated into the new; when Bridges found a panel of Art Deco-styled vintage brocade, he used it to trim the dress Bejo wears during the scene when Peppy is being interviewed. Hazanavicius was impressed by Bridge’s talent and work ethic.

“Mark Bridges knows everything, and I think he works maybe thirty hours a day!” the director enthuses. “He’s very perceptive and he knows that small details can be very powerful. For example, there’s an ellipse from ’29 to ’31, when George’s decline accelerates. I asked Mark to adjust Jean’s costume, and to make it a little bit larger so we have the feeling that his character has shrunken a little bit. And Mark did that, very subtly, with a lot of taste. His work throughout brought so much to the film.”

Music is an indispensable part of silent film storytelling, serving variously as emphasis and counterpoint to the actions and emotions onscreen. For this critical element, Hazanavicius turned to his longtime collaborator Ludovic Bource, who has scored all the director’s films since his feature debut, 1998’s ‘Mes Amies’.

Like the other collaborators working on the film, Bource did his homework, listening to scores by legendary Hollywood composers such as Max Steiner, Franz Waxman and Bernard Hermann; music written by Chaplin for his films; and the 19th Century composers whose work was the foundation of Steiner, et al.  With that knowledge absorbed, Bource was then free to write the score that would help tell the story of ‘The Artist’.

He began working on the score before production began, coming up with melodies and themes based on the screenplay and storyboards. Once production began, Hazanavicius sent him rushes on a regular basis. “I immersed myself in the rushes as they came in, and in the performances of Bérénice and Jean,” Bource remembers.

“Watching these magnificent images as they arrived was very inspiring. The hardest thing, particularly with Jean’s character George, was to respect the combination of comedy and emotion. As a result, rather than pastiche or spoof, we worked – a bit like Chaplin – along the lines of a light sophistication. And for the tap dance sequence, I wrote music that was essentially big band/jazz, which was a pleasure.”

Work continued on the film’s music during the editing process, when Bource worked with Hazanavicius to refine the music and match it to the  final scenes. Bource recorded the score in Brussels with the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra. Says Bource, “I recorded with 80 musicians: 50 string players, 4 French horns, 4 trombones, 5 percussionists who ran around all over the place, a harpist, 10 technicians, 5 orchestrators, 3 mixers – it was sublime.

I was lucky enough to get marvelous people. They told me it had been a long time since they had felt this way while recording the music for a film. It was very moving and gratifying.”

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It was during the making of ‘OSS 117 – Nest of Spies’ in 2005 that Michel Hazanavicius first mentioned his dream about making a silent movie to that film’s stars, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. A dream which eventually won him glory at this year’s Academy Awards.

“We thought it was wonderful madness; we never imagined such a project could ever be achieved,” Bejo acknowledges. When Hazanavicius finally set to work on his silent movie story, he wrote the roles of George Valentin and Peppy Miller with Dujardin and Bejo in mind, certain they would excel in the format.

“Jean is as good in close-ups, with his facial expressions, as he is in long shots, with his body language,” he comments. “Not all actors are good with both; Jean is. He also has a timeless face that can easily be ‘vintage.’  Bérénice has that quality, too. She exudes freshness, positivity, goodness. I thought viewers would easily accept the idea that she would stand out from the crowd and become a big star in Hollywood. George Valentin and Peppy Miller are, in a way, Jean and Bérénice fantasized by me!”

Dujardin knew that the filmmaker had been researching the silent era and watching numerous films, but he had little idea of what to expect when Hazanavicius gave him the screenplay for ‘The Artist’. “He handed it to me, slightly feverish: ‘Read this, but don’t laugh, do you think it’s possible? What do you think of it? Would you be ready to do it?’” the actor remembers.

“I read it in one sitting. My first thought was that it was really gutsy to have pursued his fantasy all the way. As was the case with each of Michel’s scripts, I thought it was really well written, with everything perfectly in place. Up until then, we’d made comedies where we had a lot of fun with characters and situations.

‘The Artist’ had comedy and action, yet it was full of emotion. I was touched by all it said about cinema, its history and actors. I loved the premise, the meeting between George Valentin and Peppy Miller, the story of crossed destinies.” Dujardin was moved by the transformation George undergoes as he grapples with the arrival of sound. “At first George doesn’t ask himself a lot of questions.

He’s not arrogant, but he’s sure of himself, confident in the charm that he assumes so easily,” the actor remarks. “George is very showy, always acting. It’s as if he was only an image, a face on a poster. Then, little by little, this confidence, this lightness starts to crack. He starts sliding towards the bottom. Luckily, there’s an angel watching over him. At the end he is not a photo but a man — only a man. I liked this path.”

Bejo is Hazanavicius’s partner and so had the closest view of the story’s development and evolution. She reports that Peppy Miller began life as an incidental character, less central to the story than the dog who is George’s best friend. Remembers Bejo, “Michel told me, ‘There will be a girl who will appear here and there.

It will only be a small part but I’d really like you to do it.’ I would joke, ‘Even the dog has a bigger part than me!’ Later, Michel told me, ‘it’s strange when you write: you create characters, a story, but at a given point they become stronger than the hand that writes them.’ The story of this silent movie star became a love story between him and this young extra. From version to version, Peppy Miller gradually became more and more important.”

Bejo found much to admire in the fledgling actress. “I liked Peppy right away; she stimulated me. When you do improv you’re taught never to say no and take everything that is offered to you, accept it and play with it. Peppy applies this rule throughout her life; she has fun with everything. Stars often have that quality.

They’re not where they are by coincidence: they have enormous self-confidence, they grab what’s available to them, that’s how they climb the ladder and become stars. But Peppy’s not in any way calculating.  She’s a good person, and doesn’t forget where she came from. And she doesn’t forget George.”

The casting process moved to Los Angeles, where Hazanavicius worked with casting agent Heidi Levitt. John Goodman was approached to play Al Zimmer, the studio chief who walks the line between coddling and corralling his contract stars. The actor liked the script, and a meeting was arranged at his agent’s office. Remembers Hazanavicius, “We talked for a few minutes. Then John said, ‘Okay. I’ve never seen a movie like this and I want to be part of it.’ I said, ‘Okay’ and that was it!”

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Winner of the prize for Best Actor at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture at the 2012 Academy Awards, Michel Hazanavicius’s ‘The Artist’ is a heartfelt and entertaining valentine to classic American cinema.

Set during the twilight of Hollywood’s silent era and shot on location in Los Angeles, ‘The Artist’ tells the story of a charismatic movie star unhappily confronting the new world of talking pictures. Mixing comedy, romance and melodrama, ‘The Artist’ is itself an example of the form it celebrates: a black-and-white silent film that relies on images, actors and music to weave its singular spell.

Hollywood, 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is one of Hollywood’s reigning silent screen idols, instantly recognizable with his slim moustache and signature white tie and tails. Starring in exotic tales of intrigue and derring-do, the actor has turned out hit after hit for Kinograph, the studio run by cigar-chomping mogul Al Zimmer (John Goodman).

His success has brought him an elegant mansion and an equally elegant wife, Doris (Penelope Ann Miller). Chauffeured to the studio each day by his devoted driver Clifton (James Cromwell), George is greeted by his own smiling image, emblazoned on the posters prominently placed throughout the Kinograph lot. As he happily mugs for rapturous fans and reporters at his latest film premiere, George is a man indistinguishable from his persona — and a star secure in his future.

For young dancer Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), the future will be what she makes of it. Vivacious and good-humored, with an incandescent smile and a flapper’s ease of movement, Peppy first crosses George’s path at his film premiere and then as an extra on his latest film at Kinograph.

As they film a brief dance sequence, the leading man and the newcomer fall into a natural rhythm, the machinery of moviemaking fading into the background. But the day must finally end, sending the matinee idol and the eager hopeful back to their respective places on the Hollywood ladder.

And Hollywood itself will soon fall under sway of a captivating new starlet: talking pictures. George wants no part of the new technology, scorning the talkie as a vulgar fad destined for the dustbin. By 1929, Kinograph is preparing to cease all silent film production and George faces a choice: embrace sound, like the rising young star Peppy Miller; or risk a slide into obscurity.

The Journey

A celebration of Hollywood moviemaking at its most magical, ‘The Artist’ represents the fulfillment of a long-held dream for writer/director Michel Hazanavicius. “From the beginning of my career, I fantasized about making a silent film,” he says. “I call it a fantasy because whenever I mentioned it, I’d only get an amused reaction – no one took this seriously.”

But Hazanavicius was entirely serious. The legendary filmmakers he most admired had begun their careers in silent cinema: Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau, and, in his early years as a screenwriter, Billy Wilder. Mainly, though, he was drawn to the format for creative reasons.

“As a director, a silent film makes you face your responsibilities,” he remarks. “Everything is in the image, in the organization of the signals you’re sending to the audience. And it’s an emotional cinema, it’s sensorial; the fact that there is no text brings you back to a basic way of telling a story that only works on the feelings you have created. I thought it would be a magnificent challenge and that if I could manage it, it would be very rewarding.”

In 2006, Hazanavicius scored a critical and commercial success with his second theatrical feature, the buoyant spy spoof ‘OSS 117  – Cairo, Nest of Spies’, starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. A sequel, ‘OSS 117 – Lost in Rio’, followed in 2009, cementing Hazanavicius’s reputation as a maker of artful and crowd-pleasing entertainment.

Set in the late 50s and early 60s, respectively, the films had given Hazanavicius a solid grounding in the logistics of period storytelling and cinematic tribute. With those back-to-back hits under his belt, the filmmaker decided to pursue his silent movie for his next project.

His quest for a producer eventually led him to Thomas Langmann, whose credits include the award-winning ‘Mesrine’ gangster films and whose father was the Oscar-winning filmmaker Claude Berri. Langmann immediately understood what Hazanavicius wanted to do and why. “Thomas is a producer like no other,” asserts Hazanavicius.

“Not only did he take what I said seriously, I saw in his eyes that he believed in it. It was no longer a fantasy but a project. I could start working.” Says Langmann, “Michel had such passion and understanding for the genre, and it was clear he had the creativity and drive to make a silent movie that would be vibrant, beautiful and relevant to the 21st Century. The whole idea was so daring, so enthralling, I didn’t hesitate to pledge my support to Michel.”

As he began mulling story ideas, Hazanavicius remembered an anecdote he’d heard from a family friend, screenwriter and playwright named Jean-Claude Grumberg. One day, Grumberg pitched a producer an idea about a silent movie actor ruined by the arrival of talkies. “The producer had replied: ‘That’s wonderful, but the ’20s — that’s too expensive. Couldn’t it be set in the ’50s?’” Hazanavicius recalls.

“That’s how this idea of a film set in the Hollywood of the late ’20s and early ’30s, in black and white, was formed. I don’t make films to reproduce reality.  What I love is to create a show and for people to enjoy it and be aware that’s what it is, a show. In any case, you can’t remake films exactly the way they were made 90 years ago.

Audiences have been exposed to so much; they are sharper, quicker and a lot smarter.  It’s exciting to stimulate them.” He continues, “My starting point was a silent movie actor who doesn’t want to hear anything about the talkies. I circled around this character, and then I got the idea of this young starlet and crossed destinies. Everything fell into place, including the themes — pride, fame, vanity, love.”

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