Resumen de O Artista, Quixote de Pierre Menard? Do Cinema Mudo à Era Digital
Valdemar Miguel Neto Catarina Martins
Michel Hazanavicius’s recreates the realm of silent movies, setting it up digitally. The public is allowed a new contactwith the cinema of the first three decades of its existence and The Artist (2011) presents itself as a silent movie inblack and white.In 1939, Jorge Luis Borges created Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, about an author who wrote a Don Quijote,equal to the one wrote by Cervantes. But because Pierre Menard is in a new circumstance, he becomes author of anew work. Michel Hazanavicius makes use of certain concepts from the silent movies on which he inspires himself.Nevertheless he recreates a universe from the consciousness of what Cinema is now, and the impact the passagefrom the Silent to the talkies has had. He ignores the single premise that allows this development – synchrony – fromwhich the films aesthetics so far were not dependent on.Is it possible to create silent movies in the digital age? Is The Artist a pastiche of silent movies, or rather the possibilityof making silent movies in the Digital age? The technological reproducibility that W. Benjamin speaks of and itssubsequent evolution established new protocols in understanding cinema and filmmaking itself. Understanding themeeting points between the fictional Pierre Menard and Michel Hazanavicius allows us to question the ideologicaland the reception of films digitally configured.
