Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm your host, Glen Holland.

Tonight's film is the multiple "Academy Award" winner, ""The Artist"," released in 2011.

It was written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, and stars Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, and James Cromwell.

The film takes place in Hollywood between 1927 and 1932.

The period when the movie industry transitioned from producing silent films to producing movies with sound effects, music, and most important, talking.

The story centers on two people.

The first is matinee idol, George Valentin, whose good looks, charm, and physical grace, have made him a swashbuckling hero to hordes of movie fans.

The second is Peppy Miller, a pert and assertive young woman, who literally bumps into George, when he is posing for photographs, at the premier of his latest motion picture.

When photographs of the two appear under the headline, Who's That Girl?, Peppy uses her new notoriety to get work as a dancer in George's next film.

The two of them hit it off, and he helps her get her start in the industry, even as Peppy finds herself falling for him.

Over the next two years, she appears in a series of films, in more and more prominent roles, while George continues to star in his own films.

But in 1929, his studio stops production on all silent films, in favor of converting exclusively to sound pictures.

Peppy is now in demand as a new sort of star.

George, on the other hand, laughs off talkies as nothing more than a gimmick, but soon discovers that the movies, and his fans have moved on without him.

If this plot line sounds a little familiar to you, that's because it's a variation of a story the movies have told many times before.

What makes ""The Artist"" unique, and something of a sensation on its release in 2011, is that the movie is itself a black and white silent film.

While there is a musical soundtrack, the dialogue appears only on inner titles, written out on slides that interrupt the action.

There were subtle ties to silent films as well.

"The Artist" was shot at 22 frames per second, instead of the modern standard of 24 frames per second, so the action moves slightly faster, as silent films often do.

The director avoids film techniques that weren't used during the silent era.

So there are closeups but no zoom shots.

The movie was also shot at the almost square frame ratio common in silent films.

The so-called Academy ratio of four to three.

Director Hazanavicius says the academy ratio gives actors a presence, a power, a strength.

They occupy all the space of the screen.

Something else that makes "The Artist" unique as a film about Hollywood ,that was also made in Hollywood, it's a French production.

It was written and directed by a Frenchman, and stars two French actors, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo.

Writer and director Michel Hazanavicius cast American actors in supporting roles, notably John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, and Missi Pile.

These well known actors fulfill the function served by character actors in the old studio system, giving their roles extra shading and texture, because their faces, demeanor, and personalities are familiar from earlier roles.

It seems inevitable that Hazanavicius would film "The Artist" in Hollywood, using locations with direct connections to earlier motion pictures and personalities.

He did extensive research on Hollywood in the twenties and thirties, and worked to make his film authentic to the period, while retaining that slight sense of the unreal, that is also typical of movies of the era.

At the same time, "The Artist" is not simply a recreation of a silent film, or a homage.

It is a modern film that provides both a look back, and a meditation on the nature and history of movie making, by offering a typical Hollywood story of failure, and triumph.

The basic story of "The Artist" is a melodrama, because Hazanavicius felt the most enduring of the silent films were melodramas.

But many of those melodramas were also comedies, like Harold Lloyd's "The Kid Brother" in 1927, or Buster Keaton's, "Steamboat Bill, Jr." in 1928.

In the same way there was a lot of humor in "The Artist".

The film is evocative of a particular era in motion picture history, but it also draws on different aspects and artifacts of later motion picture history, to create a film that is both somehow familiar, and yet startlingly new.

The character of matinee idol, George Valentin, was based on Douglas Fairbanks, the swashbuckling hero of such films as "The Mark of Zorro" in 1920, "Robin Hood" in 1922, and "The Thief of Baghdad" in 1924.

Fairbanks born on May 23rd, 1883, was one of the greatest stars of the silent era.

When he married his second wife, actress Mary Pickford, in 1920, they became movie royalty, and Fairbanks was known as the King of Hollywood.

An actor, screenwriter, producer, and director, Fairbanks was also a founding member of United Artist Studio, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He served as host of the very first "Academy Awards" ceremony in 1929.

The advent of sound pictures diminished Fairbanks' interest in acting, given the restrictions that production of early talkies placed on the actors.

He made both his last silent film, "The Iron Mask", and his first sound picture, "The Taming of the Shrew", with Mary Pickford in 1929, but his health was failing.

He made only three more sound films, before retiring in 1934, after completing "The Private Life of Don Juan".

He died of a heart attack, five years later at the age of 56, a swashbuckler to the last.

Towards the end of "The Artist", when George Valentin is watching scenes from his old films at his home, he's watching scenes from Fairbanks' "The Mark of Zorro".

Jean Dujardin took the place of Fairbanks, in the close up shots in the film.

Valentin's dog Jack, played by a Parson Russell Terrier named Uggie, is a tribute to the many dogs who played supporting roles in silent motion pictures.

But his heroics at a crucial point of the film, recall the cinematic deeds of Hollywood's early canine stars.

The first was Jean known as the Vitagraph dog, a collie who starred in Vitagraph films, between 1910 and 1915.

She was followed by a German Shepherd, Strongheart, who starred in rugged outdoor adventures, between 1921 and 1927.

But the silent era's biggest dog star was Rin Tin Tin.

Rinty, like Strongheart, was a German shepherd.

He starred in 27 films between 1922 and 1931, and gained an international following.

His films are sometimes credited with making a success of Warner Brothers Studios.

It took Michel Hazanavicius four months to write the screenplay for "The Artist".

Because there was no spoken dialogue, the screenplay was only 42 pages long, the shortest ever to be nominated for any major award.

It was inspired by a number of films including a 1928 silent comedy, "Show People", starring Marion Davies.

That movie followed the rise of an aspiring actress, from her days doing slapstick comedy, to leading roles in prestigious dramas.

"The Artist" plot also bears a strong resemblance to the stories of both 1932's, "What Price Hollywood", and 1937's "A Star is Born".

In those films, an established male movie star helps an aspiring young actress begin her movie career.

The two become romantically involved, but as her career ascends, his goes into a steep decline, accelerated by his drinking.

Other famous films featuring scenes with parallels in "The Artist", include 1941's "Citizen Kane" 1950's "Sunset Boulevard", and the 1952 musical "Singing In the Rain".

In addition to these story connections to earlier famous films, the locations, and scenic design of "The Artist", have some interesting ties to old Hollywood.

The house Peppy lives in after her success in movies, is the House Mary Pickford lived in, before she married Douglas Fairbanks in 1920.

The bed George wakes up in is Mary Pickford's bed, and other items of her furnishings also appear in those scenes.

The exterior of the hospital where George is taken is the main entrance to the Warner Building of the American Film Institute.

Director Hazanavicius also used optical effects to recreate the Hollywoodland sign that once stood in the foothills, overlooking the movie capital.

Since 1949, the sign has simply read Hollywood, as it still does today.

If Michel Hazanavicius meant "The Artist" as a Valentine to the motion picture industry and its people, the industry and its people, have certainly returned the love.

The film was nominated for 10 "Academy Awards", and won five, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Jean Dujardin, and awards for Best Costuming, and Best Original Score.

The film won many other awards both here and abroad, including six "Césars", the National Film Award of France.

"The Artist" is also something of a Valentine to the actress who played Peppy Miller, Bérénice Bejo, who first met Michel Hazanavicius in 2006.

They later married, and have two children together.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glen Holland.

Goodnight.