Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
Encyclopedia
Les Vacances de M. Hulot (released as Monsieur Hulot's Holiday in the UK and US as Mr. Hulot's Holiday, is a 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.
The film was made in both French and English language versions. While Tati had experimented with color film in Jour de fête, Les vacances is black and white. The jazz
score
, mostly variations on the theme "Quel temps fait-il à Paris", was written by Alain Romans
.
Les vacances earned Tati an Oscar nomination (shared with Henri Marquet
) for Best Original Screenplay.
Les vacances was shot in the town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, which lies on the edge of the industrial port of Saint-Nazaire
, in the Departement of Loire-Atlantique
. Tati had fallen in love with the beguiling coastline while staying in nearby Port Charlotte with his friends, M. and Mme Lemoine, before the war and resolved to return one day to make a film there. Tati and his crew turned up in the summer of 1951, " took over the town and then presented it to the world as the quintessence of French middle-class life as it rediscovered its rituals in the aftermath of the Second World War." "Neither too big nor too small, [St Marc fitted the bill] - a sheltered inlet, with a graceful curve of sand, it boasted a hotel on the beach on which the main action could be centred. Beach huts, windbreaks, fishing boats and outcrops of rock helped to complete a picture which was all the more idyllic for being so unspectacular." A bronze statue of M. Hulot was later erected and overlooks the beach where the film was made.
'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
.
Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati was a French filmmaker, working as a comedic actor, writer and director. In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly of the Greatest Movie Directors Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time...
. It introduced the pipe-smoking, well-meaning but clumsy character of Monsieur Hulot, who appears in Tati's subsequent films, including Mon Oncle
Mon Oncle
Mon Oncle is a 1958 film comedy by French filmmaker Jacques Tati. The first of Tati's films to be released in colour, Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign...
(1959), Playtime
Playtime
Play Time is French director Jacques Tati's fourth major film, and generally considered to be his most daring film. It was shot in 1964 through 1967 and released in 1967. In Play Time, Tati again plays Monsieur Hulot, a character who had appeared in some of his earlier films, including Mon Oncle...
(1967), and Trafic
Trafic
Trafic is a 1971 comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Trafic was the last film to feature Tati's famous character of Monsieur Hulot, and followed the vein of earlier Tati films that lampooned modern society.-synopsis:...
(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.
Synopsis
Les vacances de M. Hulot follows the generally harmless misadventures of a lovable, gauche Frenchman, Monsieur Hulot (played by Tati himself), as he joins the 'newly-emerging holiday-taking classes' for an August vacation at a modest seaside resort. The film affectionately lampoons several hidebound elements of French political and economic classes, from chubby capitalists and self-important Marxist intellectuals to petty proprietors and drab dilettantes, most of whom find it nearly impossible to free themselves, even temporarily, from their rigid social roles in order to relax and enjoy life. The film also gently mocks the confidence of postwar western society in the primacy of work over leisure and the value of complex technology over simple pleasures, themes that would resurface in his later films.Style
For the most part, in Les vacances, spoken dialogue is limited to the role of background sounds. Combined with frequent long shots of scenes with multiple characters, Tati believed that the results would tightly focus audience attention on the comical nature of humanity when interacting as a group, as well as his own meticulously choreographed visual gags. However, the film is by no means a 'silent' comedy, as it uses natural and man-made sounds not only for comic effect but also for character development.The film was made in both French and English language versions. While Tati had experimented with color film in Jour de fête, Les vacances is black and white. The jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
, mostly variations on the theme "Quel temps fait-il à Paris", was written by Alain Romans
Alain Romans
Alain Romans was a French jazz composer. He studied in Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris. His teachers included Vincent d'Indy. He later worked with Josephine Baker and Django Reinhardt....
.
Les vacances earned Tati an Oscar nomination (shared with Henri Marquet
Henri Marquet
Henri Marquet is a French assistant director and screenwriter. He was co-nominated with Jacques Tati for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for the film Mr. Hulot's Holiday .- External links :...
) for Best Original Screenplay.
Les vacances was shot in the town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, which lies on the edge of the industrial port of Saint-Nazaire
Saint-Nazaire
Saint-Nazaire , is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France.The town has a major harbour, on the right bank of the Loire River estuary, near the Atlantic Ocean. The town is at the south of the second-largest swamp in France, called "la Brière"...
, in the Departement of Loire-Atlantique
Loire-Atlantique
Loire-Atlantique is a department on the west coast of France named after the Loire River and the Atlantic Ocean.-History:...
. Tati had fallen in love with the beguiling coastline while staying in nearby Port Charlotte with his friends, M. and Mme Lemoine, before the war and resolved to return one day to make a film there. Tati and his crew turned up in the summer of 1951, " took over the town and then presented it to the world as the quintessence of French middle-class life as it rediscovered its rituals in the aftermath of the Second World War." "Neither too big nor too small, [St Marc fitted the bill] - a sheltered inlet, with a graceful curve of sand, it boasted a hotel on the beach on which the main action could be centred. Beach huts, windbreaks, fishing boats and outcrops of rock helped to complete a picture which was all the more idyllic for being so unspectacular." A bronze statue of M. Hulot was later erected and overlooks the beach where the film was made.
Critical reaction
On its release in the United States, Bosley CrowtherBosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
'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
David Bellos
David Bellos is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos currently teaches French and Comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States. He is also director of Princeton's Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication....
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
Elegiac
Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter...
quality [too], the sense that what Tati finds funny he also cherishes."
The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival
1953 Cannes Film Festival
-Jury:*Jean Cocteau *Louis Chauvet *Titina De Filippo *Guy Desson *Philippe Erlanger *Renée Faure *Jacques-Pierre Frogerais *Abel Gance *André Lang...
.
Cast
- Jacques TatiJacques TatiJacques Tati was a French filmmaker, working as a comedic actor, writer and director. In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly of the Greatest Movie Directors Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time...
as Monsieur Hulot - Nathalie Pascaud as Martine
- Micheline Rolla as The Aunt
- Valentine Camax as Englishwoman
- Louis Perrault as Fred
- André Dubois as The Major
- Lucien Frégis as Hotel Proprietor
- Raymond Carl as Waiter
- René Lacourt as Strolling Man
- Marguerite Gérard as Strolling Woman
Reception
- Ranked #49 in EmpireEmpire (magazine)Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.