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'The Artist'

( Weinstein Co. )

French director Michel Hazanavicius has shot movies in Morocco, Brazil and France. But for "The Artist," his new black and white silent melodrama set in Hollywood in the 1920s and '30s, Hazanavicius said he had to film in Los Angeles.

"It has to be authentic," he said. "To re-create this era, the architecture, all the details. You could go to Budapest and say, 'Yeah, this is stylized Los Angeles. People are more brown with bad teeth, but it's another Los Angeles.' No, it was important to be here."

In "The Artist," silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and chorus girl Peppy Miller's (Berenice Bejo) lives and careers are upended by the arrival of talkies -- he staggers into obsolescence just as she emerges as a leading lady.

To reconstruct the silent film age in all its glamour, Hazanavicius relied on several classic Hollywood locations. Here's a look at a few of the key ones.

Comments (2)

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JohnBengtson at 5:55 PM January 25, 2012

I've added more posts showing the connections between The Artist filming locations, and the great silent film stars, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Keaton filmed his debut short film One Week on the same studio block that would later become the studio where The Artist was filmed.

http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/the-artist-locations-part-4-bradbury-chaplin-and-lloyd/

http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/the-artist-part-3-harold-lloyd-and-safety-last-2/

http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/the-artist-part-2-and-buster-keatons-debut-one-week/

JohnBengtson at 12:32 PM January 02, 2012

You can see several more locations from The Artist, including connections to Charlie Chaplin's 1921 classic The Kid, and to Mary Picford, and to Buster Keaton, at my SilentLocations blog:

http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/the-artist-locations-chaplin-and-pickford/

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