On Holiday

If you need a break from the world today, add the above film to your Netflix queue. Click on the poster for the trailer. Review by guest contributor, Lauren Oliver.

Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953)
No groups have advanced the art of film more than magicians and comedians. In the first decade of the cinema, the veteran stage magician Georges Méliès contributed inestimably to the bag of technical tricks. And when the famous Lumière brothers attempted levity (mixed with horror) with a man's crossing the street, being run over, and then dusting himself off, they discovered the in-camera edit. Legerdemain and laughs depend on the same thing: knowing and exploiting the peculiarities of one's medium, be they a seltzer bottle, a handkerchief, or a camera.

Jacques Tati was too late to be a technological pioneer like Méliès or the Lumières, but he possessed the same keenness for experimentation. He was a superb mime (which is nothing if not a combination of magician and comedian), and as young man bore a resemblance to one of his heroes, Buster Keaton. Les Vacances de M. Hulot, the titular Monsieur's first outing, could almost be a silent comedy. The dialogue is sparse and, when not essential, mixed into the background noise. Similarly, only the most important sounds deserve foley work, like the swinging door to the hotel's restaurant, or M. Hulot's gasping jalopy. The character himself is best described as the ancestor and better of Inspector Clouseau and Mr. Bean.

The film is frugal (it has but one musical motif, a light jazz tune) and plays at a pace befitting its setting: a calm resort that is presumably just a few hours from Paris. The holidaymakers include a retired military Commandant who retains his air of authority and talks often of the Ardennes; a British woman who finds endless amusement in M. Hulot's surprising skill at tennis and ping-pong; and a blonde ingénue who I don't believe ever utters a word.

M. Hulot, who walks propped forward with a bouncing gait, seems propelled by his own indefatigable je ne sais quoi. To say "zest for life" would not only be trite but wide of the mark; nothing ever fazes M. Hulot for longer than a few seconds, enough time for the reaction shot, and perhaps that is sufficient to describe his basic innocence and gentleness. Tati's humor has been described as civilized. I might apply that adjective to the plays of Oscar Wilde, but Tati's essence seems to be dignity; no character is ever made the subject of fun. We know all of their foibles, and they are endearing, as, for instance, when the Commandant stands at the head of an armada of automobiles and navigates them in characteristically clipped language to the picnic site. Even M. Hulot is never made out to be a buffoon.

You can be assured that by the end of a modern comedy, the protagonists will have had to change their ways, straighten out their act. There is barely a plot to Les Vacances, and certainly no act-straightening, but there is, nevertheless, a softly presented point, if that isn't an oxymoron. The Criterion Collection DVD includes a "Director's Introduction" by former Python Terry Jones. He calls the climax (and I use the term loosely) a metaphorical attack on the stuffiness of the older generation. His assessment isn't wrong, per se, but the enemy isn't stuffiness; it's broader than that. It's an attack on a way of life that ignores most of what there is to life. The residents of the hotel are preoccupied with news broadcasts and radio pronouncements by stentorian politicians, and not all are as old as dust; amongst their number is a heavily spectacled young man who plies the taciturn blonde with philosophy and headlines. A jazz record is anathema to these people. In their judgement (the harshest in the film), M. Hulot and the blonde are frivolous.

I won't say how and when M. Hulot triumphantly upbraids the fuddy-duddies, but if a smile doesn't crease your face, best to crank the news from Capitol Hill.