Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1954)

Like the man said if you're going to steal then steal from the best, something Jacques Tati took to heart, it seems clear he spent his youth screening one Buster Keaton movie after another and then starting again from the beginning until he'd mastered every sight gag, every move, every iota of comic timing from a master and then done his inept best to imitate it. He does, of course, rate top Brownie Points for taste and lesser Brownie Points for Effort but it's not enough to admire the Eiffel Tower to the extent that it inspires you to design and build one of your own, the trick is not just to replicate but to excel and come up with a better tower than the original. This is not to say that this movie lacks entertainment value in fact if you've never heard of or actually seen even a mediocre Buster Keaton movie and dig slapstick then chances are you'll enjoy this. Alas, I have seen the odd Buster Keaton movie ...

-Les Vacances de M. Hulot (released as Monsieur Hulot's Holiday in the UK and Mr. Hulot's Holiday in the US) is a 1953 French comedy film starring and directed by Jacques Tati. It introduced the pipe-smoking, well-meaning but clumsy character of Monsieur Hulot, who appears in Tati's subsequent films, including Mon Oncle (1959), Playtime (1967), and Trafic (1971). The film gained an international reputation for its creator when released in 1953. The film was very successful as it had a total of 5,071,920 admissions in France.--Critical response:-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." He said the film "exploded with merriment" and that Tati "is a long-legged, slightly pop-eyed gent whose talent for caricaturing the manners of human beings is robust and intense.... There is really no story to the picture.... The dialogue... is at a minimum, and it is used just to satirize the silly and pointless things that summer people say. Sounds of all sorts become firecrackers, tossed in for comical point." -Tati biographer David Bellos has described the film as "Sublime," and said that, "It was through this film that I first fell in love with France. I think that is true of a lot of people." The journalist Simon O'Hagan, writing on the occasion of the film's 50th anniversary in 2003, wrote that the film, "might contain the greatest collection of sight gags ever committed to celluloid, but it is the context in which they are placed and the atmosphere of the film that lift it into another realm. The central character is an unforgettable amalgam of bafflement at the modern world, eagerness to please and just the right amount of eccentricity - i.e. not too much - his every effort to fit in during his seaside holiday merely succeeds in creating chaos out of orderliness. Puncturing the veneer of the comfortably off at play is by no means the least of Tati's concerns. But, (there is) an elegiac quality (too), the sense that what Tati finds funny he also cherishes." -The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.

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.

This is the kind of film that is either your cup of tea, or decidedly not as funny as it's supposed to be. It's really a series of visual mishaps, all done in sight gag style that becomes a bit tedious or worn out after awhile. I'm evidently in the minority on this film, but I find it extremely overrated as a satire of the French on holiday.Tati as a bumbling Frenchman interacting with other guests at a seaside resort could have made a fine comedy since the premise is really a good one. However, none of the other characters have much to say or do after their first few scenes, the pace is very slow, the gags fall into the not-so-funny category, and it's more like watching a silent film with a string of gags rather than a coherent satire of a quirky man causing havoc.That's only my opinion. At no time did I do more than smile and wait for the next gag. In other words, it's outlandish qualities did no more than stir a chuckle or two. It's a film I could visit once and never see again.Summing up: Not worth the view. It's a one joke movie that wears out its welcome rather quickly.