Michel Hazanavicius
Michel Hazanavicius
Michel Hazanavicius; born 29 March 1967) is a French film director, producer, screenwriter and film editor best known for his 2011 film, The Artist, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Awards. It also won him the Academy Award for Best Director. He also directed spy film parodies OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spiesand OSS 117: Lost in Rio...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth29 March 1967
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything.
The fact that I made a special movie with an old-fashioned style - even if it's a mix between with modern and old-fashioned things - must mean I feel both ways about change. In a way I'm resisting, but in a way adapting myself to the times.
I'm very happy in France making movies.
I make almost all the decisions on set and have to deal with all the financial aspects.
French people are strange about America, I think.
But sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable.
Bernard Herrmann was a genius, a great, great composer.
An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way.
They said 'if you have a 3D movie, we'll buy it' because they want it. For maybe two weeks I really thought of a silent, black and white 3D movie and I thought it could be great. I imagined it as a very special image, a very new image, but fortunately, I didn't have to do it.
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.
I think being a foreigner and talking about Hollywood allowed me to use some cliches and some references that an American would maybe not use.
At the very beginning, it's a desire and that's not the same thing at all, because when you have the desire to do something, all the work you can do is a positive thing. It's not something that you calculate. An idea is something you work on to make it work and a desire is much deeper in a way. The immersion, it's classical, I watched a lot of movies.
I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.