Arts: How The Artist Gets Quicksand Wrong

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Brow Beat How The Artist Gets Quicksand Wrong By Daniel Engber Posted Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012, at 06:53 PM ET The Artist has become the fifth silent film (and first since 1929) to be nominated for Best Picture. What about the movie's snippets of dialogue and sound effects? Never mind those—if it's not exactly a silent film in the strict definition, then at least we can agree it's pretty quiet throughout. (I had a similar thought at the news that The Artist might be the first black-and-white feature to win the award since Schindler's List: Was Spielberg's film really in black-and-white? What about the color scenes at the very beginning and the end, and the girl in the red coat? Shouldn't we call it a black-and-whitish film instead?) There's another throwback element in The Artist, and one that may not suffer from such half-measures: So far as I know, it's one of only two feature films ever to have been nominated for Best Picture that features a scene involving quicksand. The only Oscar-winning quicksand moment in the history of the Academy Awards occurred 40 years ago, in Lawrence of Arabia, when (spoiler alert!) Peter O'Toole watched his companion sink into the Sinai desert during a dust storm and then buried his face in anguish. As I've argued in Slate, this was the high-water mark for quicksand in the movies, and in the culture at large: A scene of sinking in a serious film, presented with gravity and grandiloquence. Lawrence of Arabia was nominated for 10 awards that year, and ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate What the Supreme Court Can Learn From Gabby Giffords and Jeff Flake's Tender Moment The New England Patriots Are Not Out for Revenge What Does Mormon Heaven Look Like? How About Mormon Hell?	Advertisement
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