I saw The Artist a night before it won an Academy Award for Best Picture. I'm not sure I know what that means about the movie.
I was first surprised by the odd quality of the film. Later I learned that the movie was shot with a color stock then transferred to black and white. I can't really make sense of why they would do that. Apparently this transferral gave the black and white a higher quality, crisper image. But, if the movie attempted to capture the spirit or feeling of old silent films why would they want a hi-def look? I think this film transfer also made the movie look hazy or stuck behind a thin layer of smoke. I wish that there had been more emphasis on the medium itself and richer blacks and brighter whites.
There were several really inspiring shots of people walking on stair cases. The shots included multiple floors of open stair cases on which, in some scenes, there were many people bustling about or just George Valentin or Peppy Miller. The contrast of moods with the repeated motif of stairs (success, failure/falling) were powerful and helped position the two main characters in their diverging career paths (or one's career and their other's unemployment.)