Have you ever noticed that when you drop some small object on the floor – an earring, a coin, or a marble, perhaps – that it always runs and hides in the darkest, smallest, and least accessible corner it can get to? A dropped object never ends up in the middle of the floor or in open sight! Most people don't realize that physical objects have a mind of their own. They don't like us humans and are always trying to escape. Probably, they just want to go off on their own and find their families. Then, there are those physical objects that live to torment us! You've probably long since figured out that those traffic lights are just waiting for you to come 'round the corner to turn red. They're laughing at you as you meekly slow to a halt at the front of the line. The pictures and photographs on the walls of your home struggle all day and night to work themselves off kilter. Maybe you've noticed when you try to open a brand new DVD all the little tricks undertaken by those little pieces of tape they use to seal the cases. Those sticky little malcontents grab onto the case as tight as they can, then they split into little pieces and, finally, they stick onto your fingers. Those little buggers have all sorts of wily ways. And, the more high-tech gadgets become, the cleverer they get at driving us crazy. These kinds of events – the torments perpetrated on us by physical objects – are the subject matter of Jacques Tati's brand of humor.

Historical Background: Jacques Tati, born Jacques Tatischeff on October 9th, 1908, is considered a national treasure in his native France. Tati had Russian, Dutch, French, and Italian ancestry and was the grandson of the Russian Tsar's ambassador to Paris. He studied art so as to qualify himself to join his father's art restoration and framing business, but he turned, instead, to a life as an entertainer in the thirties. He performed as a mime in music halls and cabarets, before parlaying that experience into a series of shorts, and finally five feature length comedies on which his reputation hinges today. Three of the shorts are featured as extras on the Criterion DVD versions of three of his feature films. The oldest of the shorts, from 1936, is Rene Clement's Soigne Ton Gauche ("Watch Your Left") and accompanies the film under review here, Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953). L'Ecole Des Facteurs (1947) ("School for Postmen") is a companion on the Criterion DVD for Mon Oncle (1958), while Course du Soir (1967) appeared on the currently out-of-print Criterion release of Playtime (1968). All three of the aforementioned feature films focused on the misadventures of Tati's cinematic alter ego, Mr. Hulot, first introduced in Mr. Hulot's Holiday. Tati had made one pre-Hulot feature film, Jour de Fête (1949) (which I will be reviewing soon) and reprised Hulot in one last feature, Parade (1974).

Tati's films feature precisely choreographed sight gags, mannerisms, and comic sound effects, with precious little dialog, making his movies reminiscent of the silent film era and such masters of that tradition as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. It is a tradition that later continued in such characters as Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean and Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau. On the other hand, it is a tradition that is largely lost in such slapstick comedians as Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey, and Tom Green, who typically depend on over-the-top burlesque antics. Tati's brand of humor is delicate, paced, and detached.

The Story: Mr. Hulot's Holiday has no plot, per se, consisting instead of a series of vignettes centering around Hulot's vacation at a seaside resort in Brittany. The antics begin even before Hulot and the other guests arrive, during their travels to the resort by train, bus, automobiles, and bicycles. At a train station, the garbled messages over the loudspeaker system create chaos for the travelers, as the scurry repeatedly through a tunnel, trying to be at the right track for the right train. Hulot himself arrives in an antiquated 1924 Hamikar roadster that is barely able to climb hills and generates a cacophony of sluggish sounds. Hulot's car is so unimpressive, in fact, that a dog sprawled across the road is ill-inclined to move for such a sorry vehicle. Arriving at the Hotel De La Plage resort, Hulot encounters an amusing cross-section of fellow vacationers. There's an exasperated waiter who sneers and grimaces, a businessman constantly on the phone managing his stock portfolio, and an attractive young woman named Martine (Nathalie Pascaud). There's an elderly couple that continuously promenades about, the gentleman always following about a half-dozen paces behind his wife. Hulot himself is the picture of politeness, doffing his hat as his fellow vacationers, even if it means putting down two suitcases to do so. Hulot never speaks except his name and rarely that.

After checking into a small, garret room on the top floor, Hulot is intent on enjoying his vacation but manages inadvertently to disrupt the activities of everyone else at the resort. When the convertible roof of his car collapses, he accidentally drives into the midst of a funeral, where his spare tire, covered with leaves, is mistaken for a wreath. Later, when the tire has been hung beside the other wreaths and begins to emit air, the usher standing nearby is suspected of passing gas. You get the idea!

Hulot turns the hotel's card games into chaos merely by playing ping-pong. While searching for a loose ball, he turns a gentleman's chair, causing him to play absent-mindedly a card at an adjacent table, completely disrupting both games. In another vignette, Hulot takes on all comers at tennis with a unique style of service.

Hulot attempts to paint his boat, but the paint can washes in and out with the waves, arriving back at his side just in time for each dip of his paint brush. When Hulot steps into the center of the boat, it cracks in half, carries out into the water, and folds up around him. As he tries to extricate himself, the two halves of the boat flap like the jaws of some sea creature, causing the total evacuation of the swimmers from the beach, accompanied by shouts of "shark."

In what is perhaps the most sentimental scene, Hulot, dressed as a pirate, accompanies Martine to the masquerade ball. She's wearing a dress that's cut to her waste in the back and Hulot, ever gallant, is reluctant to place his hand on her bare skin while they dance. Instead, he places two fingers against the narrow strap of the dress at the back of her neck. The grand finale involves Hulot accidentally setting off a fireworks display that threatens to burn down the entire resort.

Themes: While Hulot's misadventures in subsequent films intensified the connection between the creep of technology and the torture exacted on human beings by physical objects, Mr. Hulot's Holiday deals more simply with the pains of vacation and the foibles of coexistence with more traditional structures and furnishings, at a seaside resort.

Production Values: What makes Mr. Hulot special is that he is a character who is both universal and enigmatic. He is a loner of unknown background or profession. He is extremely quiet, mild-mannered, and well-intentioned, while fumbling and bumbling his way through life. He is not so much dim-witted as eternally perplexed and absent-minded. He attracts empathy from children, small animals, and the elderly but is contemptuously dismissed or overlooked by the powerful, whether they be up-scale socialites or a mule. Tati derives humor by surprise and restraint. In one scene, we watch a child carry two ice cream cones, one in each hand, toward the hotel, all the while expecting one or both to be dropped, especially with the child comes to a difficult door knob. The cones teeter and totter and tilt over on a steep angle but, instead of the obvious, Tati ends the gag with the child successfully handing one of the cones to his sister. Tati also has some gags end out of the frame. We'll see Hulot falling forward or backward, loosing his balance, and only hear the sound of a thud or crash off-camera.

There is very little plot or dialog in the entire film. One could listen to this film in French without subtitles, even if one knew no French, and still get almost the full experience. What dialog there is exists as a component of the background sound. The soundtrack is nevertheless important, providing numerous sound effect gags.

Tati uses mostly static camera placements. He lets the sight gags develop within the frame in a leisurely manner. The genius of his work is that he makes it look like the accidents all happen quite naturally while, in reality, all have had to be very carefully plotted and timed. The cinematography is spectacular high clarity black-and-white.

Bottom-Line: Criterion has provided its usual masterful production qualities for all of the Tati DVD's. For Mr. Hulot's Holiday, the transfer utilized the highest quality source material and the result is entirely free of imperfections. The aspect ratio is 1.33:1, which is full-frame for standard televisions. The DVD provides a French soundtrack with optional English subtitles or an English soundtrack that was post-dubbed by Tati himself, a few years after the film was made. Each of the Criterion DVD's for the Tati films has an introduction by Terry Jones, who is a comedian of the Monty Python troupe. Jones's offerings are effusive but not especially informative.

Mr. Hulot's Holiday received a Grand Prize from the Cannes Film Festival as well as a nomination for Best Story and Screenplay at the Oscars. Tati's brand of humor is not the type to elicit belly-laughs, at least not regularly. On the other hand, the sources of amusement are nearly continuous, one sight gag following after another. If your idea of comedy is mainly the likes of Chris Farley, Mike Myers, or Jim Carrey, this isn't likely to be your kind of film. If, however, you've a taste for Peter Sellers, Charlie Chaplin, or Monty Python, you'll find a kindred spirit – and a brilliant one – in Jacques Tati.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12