R Magazine, Ex-TeenArt_Issue 1_Authenticity Jun. 2015 | Page 40

Looking for more authenticity
Why black and white silent works should be the privilege of some artists like Chaplin, Keaton
and Valentino? Michel Hazanavicius set him the exercise in 2011 with “The artist” in association
with the talented Jean Dujardin, winning “the Oscar” on this occasion. The film director takes
up all the codes of the genre by putting the intrigue in the 1920 s: music, suits, subtitle, the
story and replace them at that original movie area.

Dramatize
When the movie stages the absolute horror, the color seems suddenly useless. Too cheerful,
too bright. That’s why Steven Spielberg chose the black and the white for his movie “The list
of Schindler”, because for him, it was simply impossible to show the horror of the holocaust
in colors.
In another register, the visual contrast which allows the black and the white, reflects the
contrasts of a society whose losing its landmarks, in the movie The hatred (Mathieu Kassovitz,
on 1995).