Virtually silent performances can often be catnip to Oscar voters — just check out Holly Hunter in The Piano, Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown, or Wall-E. With his Cannes acquisition The Artist, Harvey Weinstein manages to go them all one better: The whole movie is silent (and in black-and-white, and in the long-abandoned 1:33 aspect ratio), in order to better pay homage to a classic era of film. The trailer came out today, and it sums up the plot in a nutshell: Hollywood’s most famous leading man of the twenties, played by French star Jean Dujardin, hits hard times and is saved by the love of a good woman and his cute dog. (There’s also John Goodman and James Cromwell, lest any turned-off theatergoers think this is too French and old-timey.) The consensus around town is that The Artist is Weinstein’s great awards hope, so even though the movie and Dujardin say nothing at all, get ready to hear a lot more in the months to come.
