‘The Artist’ Director Michel Hazanavicius Headed on a ‘Search’ to 1948

How do you follow-up a triumphant, award-winning black & white silent film that Hollywood loves? Go back and remake a 1948 film! French director Michel Hazanavicius (interview), of The Artist as well as the two OSS 117 spy films, is reportedly lined up to direct a remake of Fred Zinnemann’s 1948 film The Search, but will update the setting to contemporary “war-torn” Chechnya. Variety broke the news, which comes at a key time when Hazanavicius and The Artist are aiming for some big Oscar nominations (and maybe wins). But I also find it perfectly fitting that Hazanavicius chose a classic B&W film to remake for his next project. The Search, the original 1948 film starring Montgomery Clift, is about a displaced mother’s tireless search for her son, a young Auschwitz survivor, in the aftermath of WWII. Set in the Post-War Berlin, an American private helps a lost Czech boy to find …