The Artist opens with us, the audience, watching a silent black-and-white film in which another audience watches a silent black-and-white film in which the hero defies his captors by swearing that he won’t say a word.

It’s that kind of movie, a cheeky trifle whose present-day novelty of being, well, silent and black-and-white carries it a long way. Fans of the OSS 117 films won’t be surprised as writer-director Michel Hazanavicius and star Jean Dujardin give ‘60s spy romps a break, and take equally enjoyable aim at the more earnest musicals and melodramas of the ‘20s and ‘30s. The result is similarly dead-on in its replication of an era, with a core of sincerity replacing the proud silliness of their earlier collaborations.

Dujardin plays George Valentin, a beloved silent film star in the Douglas Fairbanks/Rudolph Valentino/William Powell mold, complete with an adorable Jack Russell terrier counterpart. At the aforementioned premiere of his latest adventure, he literally bumps into a peppy fan named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) and puts on a show for the attending photographers. George’s wife, Doris (Penelope Ann Miller), isn’t happy one bit and hasn’t been for some time, but Peppy is overjoyed to work her way up the ranks of Hollywood stardom and right into his heart. However, she and others are more willing to embrace the coming wave of “talkies,” whereas George’s pride -- combined with economic folly and ensuing misfortune -- gets the better of his career.

Hazanavicius essentially combines the plots of Singin’ in the Rain and A Star is Born, threading them together with callbacks to Citizen Kane here and Sunset Blvd. there, though none of those were in fact silent films. But if that’s the road map to old-fashioned delights, then so be it. Everyone appears to take to the form effortlessly -- John Goodman as a blustery producer, James Cromwell as a faithful butler, Missi Pyle as a preening star, not to mention cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman and composer Ludovic Bource doing ace work from their end -- and what’s more, the chemistry between our dapper man and flapper girl transcends the (mostly) sound-free gimmick.

Dujardin retains that killer smile, but his bravado plays off Béjo’s moxie to splendid effect; the early sequence in which they fall for one another through a series of flubbed takes is a moment of bliss, and the climactic collaboration (don’t act so surprised to see them reunited) rivals it for sheer delight. When the going gets predictably tough in between those two points, each conveys their heartache loud and clear without vaulting over-the-top in the grand tradition of their predecessors and helps to alleviate Hazanavicius’ almost too strict adherence to conventional character arcs.

Does The Artist have much more to offer than these consistently clever riffs on a familiar rise-and-fall formula and an old-is-new appeal? No, but neither did the OSS 117 pictures. All reductive awards chatter aside, it’s unlikely that we’ll see this film dethroned as the year’s best bonbon, and in this new-fangled loud-and-fast age of ours, that should be comfort enough.

Grade: B+