Jean Dujardin took home the golden statue at this year’s Academy Awards but he was only one part of the wonderful, silent ensemble behind ‘The Artist’. Another key addition to the cast was James Cromwell, who plays Clifton, the main character George’s trusted and steadfast chauffeur.

A native of Los Angeles, Cromwell is a child of the movie business; both parents, as well his grandmother and stepmother, worked in the industry. “My father arrived in Hollywood at the advent of the sound era and became a director in the 30s. My mother was DeMille’s leading lady when he first moved into sound pictures,” the actor remarks.

Prior to meeting with director Michel Hazanavicius, Cromwell reviewed a presentation book the filmmaker had put together that included detailed storyboards. “The book was wonderful. Michel had put a lot of thought into how exactly he would make this movie, and had a very clear vision. To me, the project was too good to pass up, and I’m certainly glad I didn’t.”

Cromwell describes the chauffeur as a steady, reassuring presence in George’s life. “Clifton is more than a chauffeur. He’s really George’s right-hand man and he cares for him a lot,” says Cromwell.  At the same time, there is a formality to their relationship that is true to the period and true to Clifton’s nature. “Clifton is old-school: gentlemanly, quiet, unobtrusive, sympathetic, handy and dependable.”

Hazanavicius also sought out actress Penelope Ann Miller, who portrayed silent movie actress Edna Purviance in the biopic ‘Chaplin’ with Robert Downey Jr. In ‘Chaplin’, Miller had played silent scenes recreating portions of Chaplin’s work, and she was intrigued by the notion of acting in a feature-length silent.

The period setting also held great appeal to the actress, a lifelong movie buff who  is extremely knowledgeable about Hollywood cinema history. She gravitated to the part of Doris, George’s increasingly disaffected wife.

“I saw a lot of emotion to work with in Doris,” says Miller.  “At the point where we come into the movie, there’s clearly some tension in the marriage. Doris is a proud woman, upright, and it’s very important to her to keep up the appearance of a stable marriage. They’ve grown apart, but deep down, Doris still loves George, and still wants him to adore her. I think she’s suffering as a result of that.”

‘The Artist’ was an unusual casting proposition in Los Angeles: a film without dialogue and only a handful of supporting roles, some quite small. Nonetheless, the film attracted an ensemble of accomplished, well-known actors whose faces will be very familiar to American moviegoers.

Among them: Missi Pyle, who plays Constance, an actress who is none too pleased when George upstages her; Beth Grant, who plays Peppy’s maid; Ed Lauter, who plays Peppy’s butler; Ken Davitan, who plays a pawnbroker; Joel Murray, who plays a policeman; and Bitsie Tulloch, who plays George’s co-star in a jungle adventure.

Veteran star Malcolm McDowell heard about the production and requested a meeting with Hazanavicius. “I only had a very small part to offer him, almost an extra, and he was delighted!” marvels the filmmaker. “I really had tremendous good fortune with the entire cast.”

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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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Having never written a silent film, ‘The Artist’ creator Michel Hazanavicius immersed himself in the genre to gain an understanding of what did and didn’t work. “At the very beginning I watched movies from all over: America, Germany, Russia, France, England. I observed that as soon as the story starts to grow unclear — too many new developments, too many characters — you lose interest,” he says.

“Very soon I focused on the last four or five years of the silent era, especially in America. I think those were the best movies, and also the ones that aged best. The way the stories are told in American silents isn’t so different than the way the stories are told today.” Along with watching films, the director read cinema histories as well as memoirs and biographies of silent era directors, producers and stars. He looked at photographs and other archival materials and listened to music of the period.

He drew inspiration from the work and lives of such stars as Douglas Fairbanks, Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, John Gilbert and Greta Garbo. “Research is very important,” he comments. “Not so much to be strictly realistic — that’s not what I’m after — but as a springboard for the imagination. The research fed the story, the context, the characters.  The more research you have done, the more you can play with it all.”

Unfolding during a four year period, 1927-1931, ‘The Artist’ introduces its titular character, the action-adventure hero George Valentin, at the peak of his popularity. Fans flock to see George in films tailored to his dashing persona: exotic tales in which he triumphs over evil with wit, panache and the aid of his devoted sidekick, a Jack Russell terrier with impeccable timing.

When sound arrives, George resists the upstart format (as did Chaplin, among others). He stakes his career on his belief that the talkies will remain a novelty, and sets out to prove that he can succeed on his own terms, as an artist of the silent cinema.

Though ‘The Artist’ is set over 80 years ago, George’s circumstances, and the powerful emotions attached, are as current as ever. Says Hazanavicius, “To me, it’s interesting to think of George’s story in terms of a human being in a transition period. The world is always moving, and you might be looking in another direction.

One day, the world says to you, ‘you’re part of the past.’ It can happen in your own office, in your factory, in your relationship. It’s a feeling any person can understand.” But before he begins his descent from Hollywood heights, George meets the energetic young actress Peppy Miller.

The famous actor and the effervescent unknown are irresistibly drawn to one another, but are kept apart by chance and circumstance, unable to give voice to their feelings. It’s a classic scenario of star-crossed romance, intense yet chaste. “It’s an old-fashioned vision of love, very pure, and it also holds with the form of silent movies,” comments Hazanavicius. “Some of the masterpieces of silent cinema are simple love stories. They inspired me to take the film in a direction that was lighter, more optimistic and joyful.”

By the time he finished writing, Hazanavicius felt confident that he had constructed a story that could sustain a silent format. Hazanavicius believed ‘The Artist’ — steeped in Hollywood cinema history, sensibility and technique — had to be shot in Los Angeles.

And a Franco-American production in Los Angeles would mirror yet another aspect of silent movie history: many of the most renowned directors of the American silent cinema were native Europeans, including Charlie Chaplin, Erich von Stroheim, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Josef von Sternberg and Victor Sjöström.

To Hazanavicius’s delight, Langmann agreed the film belonged in Los Angeles. “If Thomas had said to me, ‘Okay, we’ll make the film but we’ll shoot it in the Ukraine!, I would have gone to the Ukraine to shoot it,” the filmmaker remarks. “Thomas did everything within his power to allow us to shoot ‘The Artist’ where it should be shot, where the action took place.”

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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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