REVIEW: Hugo vs The Artist - Academy Awards Top Contenders | Fun

Hugo VS The Artist
The two top contenders for this year's Academy Awards
By Jonathan Mumm

They are the top competitors at this year’s Academy Awards, HUGO with 11 nominations, THE ARTIST with 10.  They are both about the early days of movies, but differ greatly in style, technique and cinema imagery.  THE ARTIST is a movie by a French film director about early Hollywood filmmaking, HUGO is a movie by a Hollywood director about early French filmmaking.

For THE ARTIST director Michel Hazanavicius adopts the style of the time in which his story is set.  His movie takes place at the very end of the silent era and it, too, is silent and black and white, even recreating certain silent film style staging.  It is a fictitious story, repeating a favorite Hollywood theme over the years of the famous star on the way out and the young newcomer on the way up (see: A STAR IS BORN and WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD).  But THE ARTIST is also a celebration of the early days of Hollywood with a clever and enchanting script and in Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bojo, two extremely talented and personable stars.

HUGO is fictitious as well, but is based on a real person, French magician and film pioneer George Melies (Ben Kingsley) who really did end up selling toys in a little shop at the Gare Montpernasse train station in Paris (where we meet him in the movie) before he was rediscovered by the Surrealists and brought back into the limelight.

Director Martin Scorsese tells the story of an even earlier time in cinematic history than the studio run silent era depicted in THE ARTIST, taking us back to the very beginning of movies and special effects.  Melies is said to have discovered camera trickery by accident:  in filming a street scene, the camera jammed briefly and when Melies viewed the footage, the filmmaker was amazed to see a carriage magically transform into a hearse. 

What is delicious here is that while Scorsese does imitate some early silent film era staging and technique (actors moving in and out of frame; for example), he uses the latest in cinema technology to do so.  Not just glorious color and rich, full sound, but full computer effects and modern 3-D.

Both these films have heart, romance and humor.   But while THE ARTIST is concerned with simply telling its story, HUGO strives for more.  While uniquely satisfying for adults, it is also a children’s adventure film and an educational movie about early cinema all rolled into one.  We see scene after scene of the real movies of Georges Melies and Scorsese doesn’t just show us one of the most famous moments in film history, but let’s us relive it in a modern way.

In 1895, an early film audience was astounded to watch a short film by the Lumiere Brothers called L’ARRIVEE D’UN TRAIN A LA CIOTAT showing a train coming into a railroad station.  Despite the fact that it was a two dimensional, soundless black and white image on a screen at one end of the room, as the train came toward and then went by the camera lens, the audience gasped and attempted to duck out of the way.  Scorsese stages his own version of that famous scene in 3-D, by recreating an actual historic train wreck that took place at Gare Montpernasse, also in 1895. The modern audience, it must be said, reacts in similar fashion to the earlier one.

HUGO and THE ARTIST are both immensely satisfying, enjoyable experiences. Two top films of the year fully deserving of their Oscar nominations and two films movie goers shouldn’t miss.

Jonathan Mumm is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and has been reviewing movies, writing about film and interviewing filmmakers for over 15 years.