The life and career of the legendary mime Marcel Marceau are revisited in The Art of Silence. For decades, Marcel Marceau wowed audiences as his stage persona of the tragicomic clown “Bip,” becoming the world’s most famous mime. However, few would be aware of Marcel Marceau’s own tragic backstory, as his Jewish father was killed in Auschwitz and Marcel would develop his skills in silence as a member of the French resistance, who smuggled Jewish children into Switzerland.
The Art of Silence is a documentary directed by Maurizius Staerkle-Drux, whose deaf father Christoph Staerkle is himself a mime influenced by Marcel Marceau. The film features interviews with Marcel’s surviving family members, which includes his teenage grandson Louis Chevalier, who is trained as a dancer. The Marceau family is brought together by Marcel’s widow in the stage production “Fractales. Temps Zéro,” meant to honour the legendary mime’s legacy.
Two years after 2020’s Resistance depicted a fictionalized look at Marcel Marceau’s participation in the French resistance, The Art of Silenced is being pegged as the first documentary look at Marceau’s career, with his time in the war paving the way for how he would develop as a mime. The Art of Silence almost has a melancholic presentation to it, which in ways echoes Marceau’s signature character of Bip. The film also delves a bit into the therapeutic aspects of pantomime, with a former protege of Marceau using the artform to treat Parkinson’s. Altogether, The Art of Silence is an interesting world at the legacy of the world’s most famous mime.
