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
But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.
Hollywood is much more than America. Hollywood belongs to all of the planet.
Usually, when you do a period movie, you just recreate what you are shooting. You don't recreate the way you shoot it. I think I did the same thing here as I did in the OSS 117 movies. I recreated the way to shoot that period, because to me, like what I was saying about the Steadicam, there's no sense to do a Steadicam shot in the 1920s because you have never seen the '20s like that. You can't believe there was a Steadicam in the 1920s. I believe it's a continuation of the OSS 117 in a way but without the irony.
Sometimes when an actor says something almost perfect, but you know you have to edit it, if you tell them to change something immediately, it will come out great
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling
I think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they'll be screened on phones, on computers - on everything
Sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable. I remember at the very beginning actually, the first person I had to convince was myself really because there's a self-censorship. When everybody says 'we don't do silent movies anymore,' you agree with everybody, and you say 'yeah, you're right.' It was a fantasy.
This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story
When you do not have the dialogue to explain things, you will use everything to show and to tell the story. I think that this is what makes you believe that it is impeccable
Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies
I guess George Clooney would be a wonderful silent actor, and Leonardo DiCaprio is such a wonderful actor he certainly could do it.
It's about storytelling. The story is told through images. So with the cast, I had to make sure that the emotions were readable without sound... I know some great actors, if you turn off the sound, you don't really know what they're saying
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.
To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it's for them.