The Artist (2011)

The moment George Valentin appeared on stage, mugging shamelessly for his audience, I thought I was looking at the ghost of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. With his pencil-thin mustache and row of perfectly pearled teeth, the comparison didn’t seem that outrageous. Mentally, I was aware I was watching the French actor Jean Dujardin; but the illusion, though brief, was seamless, a testament to Dujardin’s uncanny genes and the vision of writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, who brings The Artist to life as if it were straight out of the 1920s, and respects it a such from first frame to last.