Seven Baftas for The Artist
Silent, black and white film continues its meteoric success
FRENCH silent movie The Artist has continued its dazzling awards success by winning seven Baftas, including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Film.
With two weeks to go before the Oscars, the film wowed the judges for the British film and television awards, also picking up the prizes for screenplay, costumes, photography and original score.
Star Jean Dujardin joked to director Michel Hazanavicius: “What have you done to me Michel? This is all your fault. Being in the company of so many illustrious colleagues… receiving this trophy from the land of Laurence Olivier, William Webb Ellis and Benny Hill; it’s incredible.”
Producer Thomas Langmann, collecting Best Film, thanked Harvey Weinstein [the film’s distributors outside France], who he said had “transformed silence into a King’s Speech” [in reference to his work on the hit British film], and Dujardin’s co-star Bérénice Béjo, “a great actress”.
The film’s previous accolades included three Golden Globes, and it is nominated for 10 Oscars and 10 Césars.
Set at the end of the 1920s, it focuses on a silent movie star who struggles to cope with the new craze for talking films, and the rise of his young protégée.
