FILM REVIEW - MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY
Monsieur Hulot is Jacques Tati’s most sublime comedy creation, and in his debut appearance from 1953, never bettered. This may well qualify as my favourite comedy of all time, and it can appeal to audiences of all ages. I remember seeing it when visiting nephews under ten saw it and also fell about laughing.
It’s a plotless almost dialogue free film. People talk, but their voices are muted, reducing talk to a gentle babble. Hulot is only ever fully heard uttering his own name, Hulot.
Essentially it’s a study of the French at play in a little seaside town. The opening shot shows the crowds rushing from platform to platform in confusion as a railway announcer tells them their train is coming in on a different platform.
Hulot is seen making a calmer progress in his clapped out car, virtually a character in the film in its own right. A sequence in which his spare tire gets coated in leaves and mistaken for a war memorial wreath is wonderful,
At the crowded hotel, where a pompous Marxist tries to seduce girls by reading political tracts, and an old war hero never finishes telling anyone of his front line adventures, Hulot causes quiet chaos, often oblivious of his effect on others. He is by no means the only comic element in the film. The surly waiter who watches Hulot with intense dislike always seems to come unstuck. Dropping a pen into a fish tank, he rolls up his uniform sleeve to recover it, but ends up dunking the other arm and his wristwatch in instead.
A mischievous young boy launches a boat before it’s had its name added to it. Hulot himself takes a skiff out on the water but it collapses round him to create a fin shape and convinces everyone there is a shark in the water.
A lovely late sequence at a fancy dress party finds Hulot dancing with a pretty girl with a dress son with no back to it. Hulot struggles to find somewhere to rest his hands so he isn’t touching her skin.
Some jokes are highly visual, such as the fireworks hut explosions, and Hulot kicking a peeping Tom up the backside. Others have a beautiful subtlety – and though silent, the soundtrack effects are superb, a door that bangs as it opens and closes becomes meaningful. Hulot’s table tennis game ends up disrupting a card game in the next room. Recovering a lost ping-pong ball, Hulot distracts a player at one table causing him to play his winning hand in a loss to the table to one side of himself.
As the guests depart, and the hotel is boarded up, there is a hint of sorrow that such a lovely vacation break may never happen again. The characters are real and you have grown to love them through the film, but now they are gone. Tati always gives his films that edge of sorrow and nostalgia.
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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