User Reviews

This movie is really pretty amusing. Amusing -- not outrageously, belly-busting, iconoclastically hilarious. Jacques Tati is not that kind of guy. He's too much the affectionate and good-natured observer (and exemplar) of human gaffes.

It's a French movie but it might as well be in Esperanto because there's hardly any dialog, and none at all that adds anything of consequence to the comedy. You can tell from the very beginning. A small knot of people packing luggage and tennis rackets is waiting at a train station. An announcement comes over the loudspeaker but it's unintelligible, distorted by electronics, a monotonous drawl of indistinguishable vowels -- "Mwarrrr rooohm rahhhr raaahr RAWRRRRR." The crowd dashes to an underpass staircase and disappears, only to emerge from another staircase near the camera. "Ra-rawwwl mwahh lawrr braah", announces the loudspeaker. The crowd quickly disappears underground and pops up again at its previous location.

Much of the comedy comes from sound effects. The swinging door of the beach-front hotel's dining room makes a curious "pong" when it closes. M. Hulot's tiny 1924 convertible with its skinny tires makes the tinny, erratic sound of a half-sized motor-driven lawn mower.

The visual gags are pretty funny too. The innocent and helpful M. Hulot is being pursued because of some misunderstanding and is compelled to pause in the chase, or dash from his hiding place, to catch a large glob of sagging taffy before it can touch the sand.

But it's all gentlemanly. And all of Jacque Tati's subsequent films were equally gentle. There is no equivalent of Chaplin's Mack Swain, the huge, black-eyed, evil gorilla who can bend street lamps with his bare hands. There are no burglars. No poverty. No social comment at all. Simply the tall, stiff figure of the fundamentally decent Tati with his queer Robin-Hood hat and his pipe stumbling through the complexities of human interactions with as much delicacy as he can muster. Never angry. Never really ashamed. Never dirty or immoral. (The most challenging incident I can remember from any of his films is an opening early morning scene in which dogs trot into the town square from different directions and they all pee on their favorite trees.) "M. Hulot's Holiday" has another virtue, which seems to have been captured almost by accident. An old and somewhat grainy black and white movie, it evokes the feeling of being on vacation at the beach. You can almost feel the sand and smell the sea. Or that might just be me, remembering the glorious summer beaches of my youth in Atlantic Highlands.

There isn't any real story, and little continuity in the gags. There are moments when nothing much is going on, or, when something is going on, it doesn't deserve the amount of screen time it gets. You could get up and treat yourself to a bathroom visit and when you returned you probably wouldn't have missed much.

I think, though, it helps to be in the right mood to enjoy this to its fullest extent. If your mind is foggy, if you're nodding out, this isn't going to wake you up.

Jacques Tati puts his naturally comical looks to good use as a hapless holidaymaker who seems largely unaware of the havoc he causes all about him. Like all comedies of this nature, it's a bit hit and miss, but it's extremely funny when the target is hit. Tati's use of sound effects in a film that's largely free of dialogue is superb.

Like many others on the continent, Mr. Hulot travels to a seaside town for his holiday and spends his weeks soaking up the local culture along with the summer sun. Jacques Tati envisioned a film that assembles the memories of countless summers into a picture postcard for the ages. The result is a series of vignettes that, for those who have seen the film, feel like a gentle reminiscence.

The tone of the film is humorous. Though there are pratfalls and other physical comedy, the emphasis is on the humor of anecdotes: the noisy auto that attracts the ridicule of children, the businessman who sits by the sea but can never fully disengage from his work, the peccadillos of vacationers lounging in the sun or relaxing in the dining room of a local inn. Most of the action is done wordlessly, giving the film additional charm.

Some of its greatest joys come from small things, like the sound of a swinging door, a peculiar tennis serve, or---unbelievably---a ping pong match we never really see.

Monsieur Hulot himself is Tati's greatest creation. Hulot is an odd character who goes about his business, unknowingly influencing those around him. Like a stone thrown into a pond, there is a ripple effect.

One can see the influences of the great silent film stars in Tati's work. And one can imagine how many others he has influenced. Rowan Atkinson has acknowledged that influence in Mr. Bean. In more subtle ways, it has probably informed such gems as "Fawlty Towers" and "Local Hero".

For millions, this is a film that might best be described as beloved.

I knew about this French film when I saw it listed in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, the title didn't suggest anything particular to me, it was rated highly by critics so I was certainly looking forward to giving it a go, from director Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle, Playtime). Basically it is the summer and many people are taking their holidays, awkward but lovable Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) has decided to take a vacation to the seaside, to the l'Hotel De la Plage resort where they are running holiday-taking classes. Often smoking his smoke and somewhat quiet, but he often gets himself into trouble, causing mishaps and unintentional chaos for other tourists and guests at the resort, and sometimes for himself. Hulot is able to socialise with young blonde Martine (Nathalie Pascaud), but because of class differences, him being much lower, they are not permitted by others to go that far with a relationship, but they ignore these constraints. Also starring Michèle Rolla as The Aunt, Raymond Carl as Waiter, Lucien Frégis as Hotel Proprietor, Valentine Camax as Englishwoman, Louis Perrault as Fred the boatman and André Dubois as Colonel. I will be honest and say that I didn't see much of a story going on, but I know that Tati gave a good performance as the nice guy that is accident prone, I did giggle at the obvious moments, like a paint pot for a boat floating in and out on the waves, and things being made to crash and collapse, so it is a fun and watchable satirical comedy. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Very good!