Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Artist
2011 · Michel Hazanavicius · The Artist on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch Dujardin's grin, held into the lens a beat too long. (performance)
Dujardin lifts the smile and the pencil mustache from Douglas Fairbanks, and he keeps deploying it unchanged as the story darkens. The same muscles do stardom early and denial later.
Payoff: The smile is a piece of professional equipment, so watching it stop working tells you everything about the man wearing it. In the reading: the gest. The reading calls this a gest: a held posture that shows a social deal, not a private feeling.
Notice the glow on Bejo's face against the shadow around Dujardin. (light)
Schiffman lights Bejo with strong key, halation and a portrait softness that keeps her smooth and radiant. Dujardin gets deep blacks, angled compositions and light that cuts his face into pieces.
Payoff: The lighting has already decided which career is rising, before the plot says so. In the reading: reflexive vs intensive face. One face holds a single quality, radiance. The other strains under pressure. The reading calls these the reflexive and intensive face.
Count how rarely the camera cuts close; actors keep their full bodies. (camera)
When movement matters, Hazanavicius gives you the whole figure inside a squared 1.33 frame. Bodies are composed for silhouette, entrances and exits clearly marked, feeling carried at full length rather than in close-up.
Payoff: You read emotion off posture and walk instead of off a magnified face, which is how silent pictures worked.
Listen for Bource's score never stopping, even between scenes. (sound)
The music runs continuously and carries the load dialogue usually takes: leitmotif for each lead, jokes scored to gesture, mood laid under every room. It never leaves you alone in silence.
Payoff: This is not a silent film but a sound film withholding speech, so notice what the score is doing in speech's place.
Watch the film cut between Peppy's rise and Valentin's world. (cutting)
Bion and Hazanavicius keep crossing the two careers: her premieres and marquees against his mansion and its quiet. The cutting sets them side by side.
Payoff: The cutting makes one machine out of two stories.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the grin. Dujardin holds it a beat too long, and the world around it keeps changing.