Classic Flicks: Jacques Tati

By Joseph Allencherril     1/27/11 6:00pm

Sylvain Chomet's recent animated film, L'Illusionniste, is based on a script the great French comedic filmmaker Jacques Tati (1907-1982) wrote in 1956 for an unproduced live-action film. (He had intended to shoot the movie with his estranged daughter, but his attempt at reunion unfortunately never came to fruition.) It would do viewers of this film some good to know the history behind Tati and his original work.Mr. Hulot's Holiday is a foreign film originally released in 1953. The film is foreign not only because it is in French but also because it is strange and exotic. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is far removed from the film comedies of its era. At heart, it is a silent film, sans spoken words but with murmurs of human voices, sound effects aplenty and a soundtrack composed of a single jazzy motif. Tati's experience as a mime is readily apparent - Mr. Hulot seems unable to speak, but his trademark slouched posture and childlike shenanigans are insights into the workings of a perpetually bemused man at odds with the rapidly evolving world around him.

The movie follows Mr. Hulot's (Jacques Tati) holiday at a beachside hotel. He moves through the hotel and the beach like a ghost, often unnoticed by his fellow vacationers. The characters in the film are not really developed; they are more like anonymous passengers on a long flight with whom we eventually grow familiar. As the film progresses, one begins to feel like a voyeuristic vacationer spying on Hulot's shenanigans. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote of Mr. Hulot's Holiday, "The movie is about the simplest of human pleasures: the desire to get away for a few days, to play instead of work, to breathe in the sea air and maybe meet someone nice."

While Americans treasure Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as heroes of the silent film era, the French have Tati, who obsessed over his films as much as his American predecessors did. For example, in one scene, Hulot is painting a kayak on the beach. His paint can is carried out to sea, only to float back at the exact moment that Hulot's brush is ready for it again. It is shot in one continuous take, and it is easy to imagine Tati laboring for hours to perfect the timing of this short scene.

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His particular brand of humor from across the Atlantic has affinities with the absurdist literature that was gaining prominent stature at the time. Indeed, it would not be a surprise to discover that Albert Camus wrote The Fall while quietly chuckling to Mr. Hulot's Holiday. Additionally, British actor Rowan Atkinson claimed Tati as a major influence in his development of the character of Mr. Bean.

To be sure, the film is not quite a laughfest in the same way that movies like This is Spinal Tap or Blazing Saddles are. But I don't believe that Tati's intention was to make every scene a laugh-out-loud moment. Carefully constructed visual puns abound, but these scenes turn out to be far more fascinating than funny. Tati seems more interested in human interaction than human humor. And like the greatest of artists, Tati disguises his brushstrokes - many of the comedic touches require repeat viewings to fully appreciate.

Tati's output following Mr. Hulot's Holiday was rather sparse: Mon Oncle (My Uncle) (1958), Play Time (1967) and Trafic (1971). In these works, Tati returned to the Mr. Hulot character to continue satirizing and influencing the direction of a rapidly burgeoning modern culture.

Joseph Allencherril is a Will Rice College sophomore. Classic Flicks is a column reexamining and rediscovering the best that cinema has to offer.

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