Where to watch The Artist (2011)

Trivia & production notes

• Director Michel Hazanavicius couldn't convince producers to back a silent film until after two spy comedies he directed, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio, became financial successes.
• The screenplay was written over four months and drew primary inspiration from the 1928 silent comedy Show People, with Douglas Fairbanks serving as the chief influence for the protagonist.
• The film was shot in color but presented in black-and-white, and used a frame rate of 22 fps instead of the standard 24 fps to recreate the slightly accelerated look of 1920s silent films.
• Principal photography took only 35 days in November 2010, shot entirely in Los Angeles using locations like Mary Pickford's actual house and the Bradbury Building for the film's famous staircase sequence.
• The closing dance sequence required 17 takes and the two lead actors to spend five months learning tap dancing beforehand.
• Director Michel Hazanavicius played music from classic Hollywood films during shooting so the actors could perform to accompaniment despite the film being mostly silent.
• The film's climactic scene uses Bernard Herrmann's "Scène d'amour" from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which similarly accompanies an extended scene without dialogue in that film.
• Only one sung song appears in the entire soundtrack: "Pennies from Heaven," which was written in 1936 despite the film being set between 1927 and 1932.
• The soundtrack was recorded over six days in April 2011 in Brussels by the Brussels Philharmonic and the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Ernst Van Tiel.
• The film was shot in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio standard to the silent film era, with all technical details including lenses, lighting, and camera movements calibrated to match the aesthetic of 1920s cinema.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Artist (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.