My Valentine.

My Valentine

What if it rained?

We didn't care

She said that someday soon

The sun was gonna shine.

And she was right,

This love of mine,

My valentine

As days and nights,

Would pass me by

I tell myself that i was waiting for a sign

Then she appeared,

A love so fine,

My valentine

And i will love her for life

And i will never let a day go by

Without remembering the reasons why

She makes me certain

That i can fly

And so i do,

Without a care

I know that someday soon the sun is gonna shine

And she'll be there

This love of mine

My valentine

(instrumental)

What if it rained?

We didn't care.

She said that someday soon

The sun was gonna shine

And she was right

This love of mine,

My valentine

The Artist (2011)

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Time Out rating

Average user rating

81 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London
Michel Hazanavicius and actor Jean Dujardin are well known in France for their James Bond spoofs, the ‘OSS 117’ films. Now they hop across the pond to 1920s California for a loving – and silent – recreation of Hollywood on the verge of sound. ‘The Artist’ is shot in exactly the same speechless, monochrome style as the movies in which our tragic hero, actor George Valentin (Dujardin), employs a canny arched eyebrow or breaks out into a rip-roaring tap-dancing routine to woo his adoring audience.

It’s 1927, Valentin is a star, but, oh no, is that the sound of… sound, on the horizon? Valentin is an insufferable ham. He laps up the adoration at a premiere, ignoring his co-stars and hogging the stage with a trusty performing dog (a constant, cute presence in the film). His domestic life is shaky, and his wife isn’t impressed when he’s snapped outside the premiere with an unknown woman and they both appear on the cover of Variety. The woman is young, beautiful Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who turns up as an extra on George’s next picture, ‘The German Affair’.

As they fall for each other, the sound age begins and Kinograph Studios sacks Valentin and contracts Miller as its star. George’s downfall – he loses his house, wife and servant (James Cromwell) – really begins when ‘Tears of Love’, his first picture as a producer-director-star, bombs on the same day that Miller’s debut becomes a hit. Will Valentin pick himself up, or is he destined to become a relic of the silent era and, cruelty of cruelties, a victim of the Wall Street Crash to boot?

The real pleasure of ‘The Artist’ is that Hazanavicius employs all the tricks and tics of silent cinema with wisdom, care and all the emotional and musical rhythm of the best of the films he emulates. It’s a movie about cinema that has a heart: it moves between funny and sad and turns the dawn of the sound age into a personal tragedy, expressed as silent melodrama. Its nostalgia is instructive: a scene of Miller and Valentin tap-dancing either side of a screen reminds us how visually inventive early sound films could be, and a scene of Valentin talking to a policeman that doesn’t have title cards reminds us that good silent films also demanded imagination from the viewer. It’s a gentle call to arms aimed at modern cinema.

Feature-length, knowing recreations of past genres can often be tiresome after the initial novelty has worn off, and yet ‘The Artist’ manages to keep up the same level of charm as its lead actor, Dujardin, throughout. Best of all, ‘The Artist’ never feels like a parody or a good idea that becomes laborious in the execution. It’s lovingly corny, great fun, good-looking and respectful. Silence being silence, you wouldn’t know it’s essentially a French enterprise – especially with John Goodman playing a big-shot producer – although Hazanavicius offers a witty nod to the film’s provenance in its final scene, reminding us that, yes, so many of the great silent Hollywood films were made by Europeans who crossed the Atlantic.

Author: Dave Calhoun
Time Out London Issue 2157/2158: 22 Dec 2011 – Jan 4 2012

P.a.r.a.d.i.se

When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
So she ran away in her sleep
And dreamed of para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Every time she closed her eyes
Ooohh
When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
And the bullets catch in her teeth
Life goes on
It gets so heavy
The wheel breaks the butterfly
Every tear, a waterfall
In the night, the stormy night
She'll close her eyes
In the night
The stormy night
Away she'd fly
And dreams of para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh
She'd dream of para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh
La-la-la-la-la
Still lying underneath the stormy skies
She said oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
I know the sun's set to rise
And so lying underneath those stormy skies
She'd say oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
I know the sun must set to rise
This could be para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh
This could be para-para-paradise
Para-para-paradise
This could be para-para-paradise
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh