Trivia

Jean Dujardin became the first-ever French actor to win a Best Actor Academy Award when he won an Oscar® for this film.

All the dancing sequences were performed by the actors themselves through heavy rehearsals.

There is not a single 'zoom shot' in the entire movie because Zoom technology did not exist in the movie's time period.

In solitude, George views a reel from one of his silent swashbucklers through a film projector centered within his apartment. The film is, in fact a genuine silent film, The Mark of Zorro (1920), which established its star, Douglas Fairbanks, as a real-life silent era action hero and matinée idol, the kind George Valentin is portrayed as being. The scene from Zorro is altered, however, substituting actor Jean Dujardin as George for Fairbanks for the closeup shots.

The film is shot with 22 FPS (frames per second). When played at the standard 24 FPS, the action becomes slightly accelerated. Most silent films were shot with 14 to 24 FPS, which makes many of these films appear "faster" in motion when played on modern projection equipment at 24 FPS. When sound films were introduced, the frame rate was standardized at 24 FPS to make it possible to sync the sound with the images.