False Past, True Art

Over on The Dabbler, I"m musing on Television's False Past.
Yesterday I went to the cinema for the first time in ages, to see The Artist, the French 'silent' film that is sweeping all before it. All I can say is that it was sheer delight, a true fully formed work of art, most definitely not a pastiche. The director Michel Hazanavicius has clearly immersed himself totally in 'silent' film, learnt and absorbed its language, and put it to brilliant - and very funny - use. Also both the leads are sensational, and sensationally good-looking, which helps. I hope the success of The Artist sparks a revival of the 'silent' movie - which is emphatically not a film trying to get by without recorded dialogue but a wonderfully expressive and immersive art form in itself. It is where the soul of cinema resides.