I first discovered Jacques Tati, watching his 1958 film, Mon Oncle. It earned Tati an Academy Award for the best foreign film, and some consider it to be his true masterpiece. Throughout his life, he only made 6 feature films, as well as some short films later in life.
He was a perfectionist. If you find yourself watching a Tati film (and I certainly hope that this week’s recommendation whets your appetite!), you will realize that it’s impossible to keep up with all the little details found in his films. They invite constant re-watching for a variety of reasons, and cinematic details are just one of them.
Monsieur Hulot is a character that could be seen as an interesting extension of Jacques Tati but only in the sense of art form. Before he became a film director, Tati was a mime—one of the oldest art forms, especially in France. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Monsieur Hulot rarely speaks (Rowan Atkinson credits Tati as inspiration for Mr. Bean). Instead, like any mime, Tati relies on body motions and facial expressions that are naturally comical but they also reveal an odd, yet delightful personality we somehow can relate to. We can especially recognize and understand Hulot’s constant frustrations with a perpetually dehumanizing, bureaucratizing society.
In Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953), we find M. Hulot taking a vacation to the seaside. But he is not alone! A variety of other people are trying to have a vacation too, and we can all relate to the pitfalls of overly planned vacations.
Hulot is a loner, yet he has no problem talking to others, and for whatever reason, ladies are attracted to him. In some way, he is sweet but doesn’t quite know how to go about the usual societal proprieties. He does, however, understand that it is indeed these proprieties that matter greatly for our relationship to others.
Not everyone is happy to be around Hulot but it is usually people who have no sense of humor. We see a man, who is there with his wife and son, but who seems to be more interested in checking the financial climate and taking phone calls; an older husband and wife; a beautiful woman; a young Marxist who keeps talking about class and bourgeoise, attempting to seduce the beautiful woman with ideology but she is more interested in spending time with Hulot.
One of the things that makes this film authentic is dialogue. Tati purposely eschewed a tightly scripted dialogue, instead, people say seemingly meaningless things. When a woman walks around the beach picking up shells, she keeps exclaiming, "Ah! A shell!” She proceeds to hand it to her husband, presumably expecting him to keep it as a memento. He simply tosses it back into the sea. It is a moment that revealed everything about their marriage!
At their core, Tati’s films are about affirmation of our humanity. He is always pointing to the absurdity of mechanized world (something that is far more evidential in Mon Oncle). At the beginning of the film, as the vacation goers are preparing to get on the train for their vacation destination, they are listening to the announcements at the train platform. The announcer leads them from one platform to the next, an indication of either a bad announcer or terribly run trains. We only hear gibberish, as if Tati is saying, “Look at us, being controlled by dumb bureaucracy!” But the bigger question is, do we have a choice?
Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday is the perfect antidote to the atomization of our society. It is a yearning, a sweet nostalgia, which was always recognized and affirmed by Tati. He knows that nostalgia can be dangerous but he doesn’t fault us for it. It is a sign of real yearning for order, an indication of our dissatisfactions. It is a recognition of gratitude too—for the sweetness of ice cream, for summer days, for masque balls and dances, and finding joy in the bitterness of life.
Happy watching!