Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1954)

Brilliant and touching

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Query: Why are some vehicles Right-Hand-Drive? Even imported cars should be converted. Great comedy moment: M. Hulot's sportscar is so small that he can reach across to sound the horn situated outside on a spare tyre on the opposite side of the steering wheel!

Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) comes to a beachside hotel for a vacation, where he accidentally (but good-naturedly) causes havoc.The film affectionately lampoons several hidebound elements of French political and economic classes, from chubby capitalists and self-important Marxist intellectuals to petty proprietors and drab dilettantes, most of whom find it nearly impossible to free themselves, even temporarily, from their rigid social roles in order to relax and enjoy life. Is this, in some small way, a precursor to "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"? On its release in the United States, Bosley Crowther's review said that the film contained "much the same visual satire that we used to get in the 'silent' days from the pictures of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and such as those." Crowther is quite right, and it would be no surprise if Tati used these earlier comedians as his template. His previous film, "Jour de Fete", had all the earmarks of a silent comedy.

I don't know where I stand with regard to Jaques Tati. Since I first saw 'Les Vacances' when I was a teenager I knew he was a bit different from most other comic actors/writers. However, I don't think he is worth the over-the-top praise he sometimes gets. I now have the box-set of his films from BFI, and we are watching them in chronological order. 'Jour de Fete' is delightful, but Tati's style wasn't yet polished. He reaches his peak with 'Vacances' and 'Mon Oncle' in my view. I'm so glad he stuck to black & white photography for this film, I maintain that it captures the heat and light of a summer's day better than any colour process. Combined with the easy jazz music (very French) and the sound of distant voices on the beach, it conjures up a sunny holiday so well. Most of the humour is pretty low-key and incidental (just as Tati intended) but there are some flashes of real laugh-out-loud occurrences. One is where he is wearing the rambler's back-pack and the stopper pops out of the thermos flask and knocks his hat off. I wonder how many goes they had at that? The restoration is excellent. The image is clear, clean and stable and most of the scratches and dirt have been banished. I'm glad the team did not do any more, as it can lead to the final result looking more like video tape rather than film (witness many of the restored MGM musicals). One to savour occasionally.

Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot is the first in one of the most recognizable sagas in French cinema (preceding Mon Oncle, Play Time and Trafic in the Hulot series). The movie follows m. Hulot through sometimes thoughtful, sometimes easy visual jokes while he is on holiday at the beach town of Saint Sévère. The film doesn't really have a plot or a beginning, middle and end, or any major event that catalysts the story or that even moves it forwards. Aside from when Hulot arrives and leaves the town, everything consists of sketches and sketches of unspoken hilariousness.Despite the first traces of the visual genius that Tati would later become and his obvious ability to do meaningful flawless comedy (as with Mon Oncle and Play Time), we here have some sketches that are trying far too hardly to make us laugh (as when Tati dresses a s pirate or plays tennis), but places them intelligently between the best jokes the film has, some of them that still remain as classics (like the old couple picking up seashells or the funeral scene). What we can also notice in this film is the absence of a central idea or anything that Tati tries to tell us here, which for me would be alright in any other normal comedy, but I personally expected more out of Tati, having seen the anti-technologist and anti-modernist pieces Mon Oncle and, especially, Play Time.Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot is a sketch-based holiday-themed visual comedy with a traditional yet sometimes clever direction, an Oscar nominated funny screenplay and an extremely hilarious soundtrack that consists only of one song played over and over again.Rating: 4/5.