Opinion No words can express

“Here,beginning at the beginning,is an oblong patch of white,a ‘tabula rasa’. Here is a camera. What can we put on the ‘tabula rasa’,what art can we develop within the limits of the screen?… The perspectives of a new world and a new silent art (have) opened out in front of us.” John Grierson’s celebrated 1934 essay,“Introduction To A New Art”,came at a time when movies were just beginning to talk. The tremendous possibilities of what that meant had only then started becoming evident on movie sets all around the world,as sound technicians started to experiment giddily,to see what a complex,enthralling experience that could turn out to be for audiences,which had,just a few years ago,learnt to look at moving visuals without shrieking and running out: the rushing locomotive from The Great Train Robbery (1903) was enough of a shocker for the earliest viewers. “I cannot tell you how far this imagery will go because we are only beginning to become dramatically and poetically conscious of sound.”

Grierson’s words may have sounded far-fetched at the time,but the coming of sound changed the movies in profound and irreversible ways. Audiences were quick to embrace sound because they were tired of not hearing: as Peppy Miller,the bubbly young miss of The Artist declares to a reporter,who is,significantly,recording the interview,“No one wants to see all that mugging to the camera anymore.”

Ms Miller was on the money. No one did. Not any more. In place of styles of acting,which took in the wide arc of Hollywood’s Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton and Mack Sennett to the great European expressionist silents,to Hindi cinema’s Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai,which used exaggerated mimetic gestures,frenetic speeds and orchestral music coming from the pits,cinema developed the language that it still uses,eighty and some years later. Sight and sound,and everything in between. Movies began to sing and shout,and haven’t stopped since.

The strides that cinema has made in the intervening decades are stunning. In a hundred years,it has become an all-encompassing thing — an art,a craft and,of course,commerce. Every so often,in an attempt to break ennui,movies turn upon themselves for inspiration and the result is,sometimes,a film that is a clever,heart-felt ode to the way things used to be. The impressive showing of The Artist (which did moderately well in the US and much better elsewhere) at most prestigious awards was just a precursor to the Oscars takeover. Yes,some of us had predicted it,but this year,the competition was tough,mostly from Martin Scorsese and his lovely black-and-white tribute to the movies,Hugo,which has everything that Marty does best,and more: superb story and sweeping style. (Hugo also got five Oscars,but mostly the technical ones.)

So what’s going on? Are we exhausted with the way movies are made these days? Or are we simply sick of the age in which we live? These are grand themes,worthy of the movies,but there could be something to both of those things: too many films these days have become prisoners of technology,where story-telling has been reduced to a series of special effects,where emotions are made cartoonish in the attempt to stay cool. Where a wide smile is dismissed,and a smirk better appreciated. Does sophistication at all cost mean junking simplicity? At a time like this,a film like The Artist,which uses blessed silence to break through the noise that surrounds us seems like the best choice: it has a flawed hero who can be redeemed,a pretty heroine who rescues him,and a faithful dog who saves his life. Crucially,The Artist tells us it is possible to be happy again.

What more can you want?

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com