The Artist wins six French film awards raising Oscar hopes

Paris: Black-and-white silent movie The Artist scooped up six Cesar awards including best film and best actress in France’s annual version of the Academy Awards on Friday, further raising French hopes that it could do well at the Oscars this weekend. A misty-eyed flashback to late 1920s Hollywood, the French-made film has proved an unexpected international success, bagging seven British BAFTA awards earlier this month, including best film, and a Golden Globe before that. [caption id=“attachment_224855” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Jean Dujardin in the Artist. Screengrab from YouTube”]  [/caption]It won best director for Michel Hazanavicius at the 37th Cesar ceremony and best actress for Berenice Bejo, who plays a young actress starting out just as silent cinema falls out of fashion and is replaced by “talkies”. “This is a film that started out at the very bottom, it’s a film nobody wanted to make, and now we are right at the top. It’s a beautiful story,” Hazanavicius said, receiving his prize. Argentine-born Bejo, who plays the beguiling Peppy Miller, admitted tearfully that she had desperately wanted to win. Co-star Jean Dujardin, whose debonair rendition of a silent movie icon has won him Best Actor at Cannes, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, was passed over for the best actor Cesar, which went instead to Omar Sy in Intouchables. Winners of Cesar awards receive Oscar-like trophies sculpted by Cesar Baldaccini, the artist they are named after. Dujardin is seen as well-placed for the best actor Oscar on Sunday, with The Artist, a critics’ darling throughout this award season, nominated for 10 Academy Awards. He would be the first French-born actor to win the Oscar for a lead role. Reuters