Jacques Tati: Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot Review

• 29th Nov 2010

In Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, French clown Jacques Tati introduces his now regular persona of M. Hulot to French audiences. He became to audiences as instantly recognizable as Chaplin’s ‘little tramp’ and became an icon of French cinema with his long legs, short trousers, raincoat, small pork pie hat, pipe and stance. His Hulot films are slapstick without being malicious, physical without being violent – all a part of his character’s charm. Tati began his career as a clown and appeared in a number of comedy shorts in pre-war films until his cinematic breakthrough came in his role as a provincial postman in Jour de Fete (1949). He didn’t make another film until Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot in 1953, in which he introduced his long standing character of Hulot.

The film opens and is set in the Brittany coastal town of St. Marc-sur-Mer, a sleepy seaside town that is disrupted by the arrival of August holidaymakers who seem to invade the small community. This transition from the town’s peaceful appearance to the noise of the arrival of traffic and holidaymakers is the best aspect of the film. We then meet the Parisian Hulot who inadvertently causes all sorts of chaos. The rest of the film is relatively plotless and is a series of incidents, apparently orchestrated by Hulot. The town of St. Marc-sur-Mer was deliberately chosen because of its charm and timelessness, lacking any sense of modernity. Even today there is a statue of Tati in the town and visitors try and stay at the films location, the Hotel de la Plage. This is the secret of the films charm: the manner in which Hulot innocently moves through the film leaving chaos in his wake or, as one French commentator observed: “Ideally, Tati would like a film of the adventures of Hulot in which Hulot himself would not appear. His presence would be apparent simply from the more or less catastrophic upheavals left in his wake.”

Tati’s Hulot character always appears like a gentle stranger in the crowd, as well as being a man ill at ease in the modern world. His unique style of playing tennis or the scene in which a spare tyre becomes a funeral wreath are two classic scenes that perfectly emphasize this, all beautifully choreographed, as a kind of ballet with Hulot moving gracefully and deliberately through each scene as though he were not a part of the human race in the same way as as his fellow holidaymakers, with the signature walk very much an element of the Tati style. However, today the film may look a little dated, despite its charm as it tries to throw cinema back to the silent style of Chaplin, especially when compared to Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), in which he used sound to comic effect, so too does Tati – in spades. Indeed, it is less of a comedy and is more a comedic ballet.

When compared to the trailer for Hulot’s Vacation, it is evident how sharp the transfer of the film is, particularly in Blu-Ray. The version released here is the 1978 re-cut that Tati himself considered definitive and is shown in Blu-Ray and in standard definition, as well as being backed by the original 85 minute French cut. It is packed with extras that include a 15 page essay by film historian Philip Kemp and an interview with film director Richard Lester.  To the non-cineaste there is no introduction needed as to who Lester is, but then again non-cinesaste’s would probably wouldn’t be watching or purchasing a Jacques Tati film from BFI. To those reading who don’t know, Dick Lester was the director of such classics as the short comedy, The Running, Jumping, Standing Still Film (1962) and went on to direct the two Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965), all of which displayed a slapstick Tati influence and here he gives his own impressions as to why Tati was so influential for him. Sadly the documentary gives no background context regarding Lester’s films, although he does talk about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) that co-starred the silent, slapstick physical Buster Keaton and here he makes the comparison between Tati and Keaton. Dick Lester does admit that Tati’s later films such as Playtime (1967) and Traffic (1970, also released by BFI) are rather labored and overlong affairs.

Here Lester observes how Tati, Keaton and Charlie Chaplin changed due to changing circumstances happening within cinema. Tati’s Hulot character became overplayed in his later films, Keaton’s career was destroyed by the poor films he made with the emergence of sound and Chaplin abandoned his tramp character when he did eventually make the transition to sound. Kemp, meanwhile makes the observation that while most of these comics were short, Tati by contrast was tall and used his stature to comic effect.

Chris Hick