French director Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist employs lush music, well-chosen but restrained sound effects and no spoken words save in one brief scene.
The result is an old-timey comic melodrama about the pitfalls of artistic pride and the power of romantic redemption that earned sustained applause at its first press screening.
A last-minute addition to the lineup of 20 films competing for the festival's top honour, the Palme d'Or, The Artist is shot in black and white, conveys its limited dialogue through silent-movie title cards and is presented in the boxy format of early cinema instead of today's widescreen panoramas.
"We live in a time when people are crazy about 3D films, people are crazy about technical innovation. Everything seems to be focused on images, and suddenly someone wanted to tell a very odd tale using this format that is a silent movie in black and white," producer Thomas Langmann said before the film's official Cannes premiere on Sunday night.
The Artist spins the tale of the fictional George Valentin — a silent-era superstar who has wealth, fame, fawning fans and an adorably clever dog who shares the screen with him.
The director admitted borrowing liberally from other films. "Sometimes these are a form of tribute, sometimes they are just sort of quotes. Sometimes I just sort of borrow or steal," Hazanavicius said. "I think if things are done tastefully, it's fine."
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