arts & entertainment
Oscar Sweep?
The Artist is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and Director/Screenwriter/Editor
Michel Hazanavicius says a certain kind of Jewish outlook informs his work.
George Robinson
Special to the Jewish News
Michel Hazanavicius, a
descendant of Holocaust
I
t is a long way from pogroms in
Eastern Europe to the Academy
Awards ceremony at the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.
For Michel Hazanavicius, the trip will
only have taken three generations.
Hazanavicius is the writer, director and
editor of The Artist, the silent comedy-
drama that already has won the Golden
Globe for Best Motion Picture (Musical
or Comedy), the award for Best Director
from the Directors Guild of America and
the top prize from the Producers Guild of
America. In all but six of the last 63 years,
the Directors Guild winner has gone on to
win the Oscar for Best Director.
Entertainment Weekly's handicapper,
Dave Karger, has the film ranked as his
No. 1 pick for the Best Picture Oscar (the
last four Producers Guild top winners have
repeated at the Oscars).
If Karger is right, Hazanavicius, who
on Sunday picked up BAFTAs (the British
equivalent of the Oscars) for his directing
and screenwriting of the film also named
best picture, will soon be on the stage of
the Chandler Pavilion, following in the
footsteps of his hero, Billy Wilder.
"We are not religious:' Hazanavicius,
44, said of his family in a recent telephone
interview. "But we certainly think of our-
selves as Jewish, if only because of our his-
tory. All four of my grandparents came to
France in the 1920s from Eastern Europe.
They were fleeing pogroms and persecu-
tions. Then came the Second World War,
and they had to run again. My parents
were 'hidden children, and some of the
family died in the camps."
He added dryly, "You can't say you're not
Jewish with that kind of history, even if
you don't practice the religion:'
But he also thinks that his work, like
Wilder's, reflects his Jewish identity, in a
highly specific key.
"There's a kind of humor that is spe-
cial," Hazanavicius said. "I love the humor
of Wilder and Ernst Lubistch, which is
the Berliner humor. There is a way to be
— never cynical but with a very strange
and elegant balance between cruelty and
lucidity. But at the same time, it's some-
thing very human and childish in another
way. It's extremely positive and extremely
negative. I've been influenced by that. But
I don't want to be presumptuous. These
guys were geniuses:'
When he was making The Artist,
survivors, directed The
Artist. He is nominated
for three Academy
Awards: Best Director,
Best Original Screenplay
and Best Film Editing.
Academy Award Best Picture nominee
The Artist stars Jean Dujardin (win-
ner of the Screen Actors Guild award
for Best Actor and a Best Actor Oscar
nominee) as popular silent screen star
George Valentin, who resists the tran-
sition to sound. Michel Hazanavicius'
wife, actress Berenice Bejo (a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar nominee),
stars as young Peppy Miller, who
embodies a modern age that is leaving
Valentin behind.
Hazanavicius readily admitted, he was
thinking of Wilder's Sunset Boulevard.
With its unsettling but ultimately satisfy-
ing blend of comedy and melodrama, a
shimmering palette of silvery gray tones
and its plot focus on the upheavals caused
in the film industry by the coming of
sound, The Artist has some clear echoes of
Wilder's 1950 classic.
Although The Artist isn't as scathing as
Wilder's depiction of an industry filled
with solipsists and ego-driven dreamers, it
was, initially, even harder to get made.
"The first financial people we
approached were sure the film wouldn't be
a hit:' the writer-director recalled. "They
thought it could be a movie, but they
didn't see the commercial possibilities. For
a film to make money in France, we need
the TV channels; and they don't show
black-and-white movies. That was the
most difficult part."
Ironically, it was the idea of making a
silent film that gave the movie a financial
chance. After all, before the coming of
the talkies, film was a truly universal lan-
guage, infinitely exportable. Hazanavicius
saw the opportunity to return briefly to
that era, allowing globalization to work for
him for a change.
"I told them, `Maybe we'll only do small
[box office] numbers in France, but we'll
sell the film everywhere," he said. "That's
why I set it in Hollywood. Everyone knows
Hollywood."
Today he admits that he was making
that sales pitch with his fingers crossed,
hoping he wasn't wrong. He wasn't, beyond
his wildest imaginings.
"It was totally (unexpectable," he said,
inventing a new but useful word. "I hope
and I believe that people would enjoy the
movie, but I couldn't expect the strength
of the reaction. In America, [the reaction]
is really incredible maybe because it's your
own story. And it's a beautiful story. It's
much more than I expected."
Of course, a Best Picture nod at the
Academy Awards on Feb. 26 would likely
propel the film to another level of commer-
cial success in the U.S. market, one unprec-
edented for a French-made film.
But Hazanavicius isn't thinking about
winning.
"Even if we don't win, it means a lot for
me," he said of the Oscars. "You just don't
lose in that competition. If you're nominat-
ed for being one of five or six or eight best
movies of the year, you don't lose."
On the other hand, he already has a sense
of what it would mean to him personally.
"When I go there, what's really touching
for me, it's about my family;" he admitted.
"My parents were hidden during the war
as kids, 4 and 6 years old, they had to hide
from the Nazis. Then 70 years afterward I
go to a ceremony like that — I don't know
how to say it. It's indescribable for me." ❑
The 84th Annual Academy Awards
airs at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26, on
ABC.
February
,
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