Les vacances de Mr. Hulot
This is my very first Jacques Tati film, and I find the idea of seeing his first film first fairly lovely. I know that his actual style is different than this, and it only makes me look forward to it more.
The film was released in English and distributed in the U.S., so that critics have compared the humor of this Tati film with silents like Buster Keaton. While I do see the parallels of this very visual comedy, I actually think that the film is much more like “L’Atalante”. Frenchness prevails, maybe?
I thought the film was totally lovely to watch, especially after a realistic, nerve-wracking epos like “Scenes from a Marriage” and totally makes me want to see more of Tati. It’s a typically French film in how it is the sum of many small, lovely details, but the sum is greater than its parts. At the end, nothing has really happened, there is no straightforward storyline going through the film besides Hulot’s interest for Martine, and ultimately, we are just left with an almost slice-of-life-ish “story” of a summer in France.
but his style is actually -everything- like this film! xDDD only that in Playtime (which is his incontestable masterpiece) Tati pulls the frame around Hulot even wider and the complexity of the mise en scene rises many-fold. but in essence it’s totally the same schtick LOL
(and it’s this sameness over and over again which can make him exasperating to watch! i guess that puts him comfortably in the spot of a modern keaton or chaplin, and i find myself at times feeling similarly irritated at their films. incidentally, my favorite film by Tati is Parade, and my favorite Chaplins are amongst his talkies, which are less typical works but kinda contain their greatest features but put in different context)
Hahaha, what I meant was that the other Tati films all look very “architectural” to me, everything looks strangely unreal, you know? XD Also, from what I’ve heard, the others are more political too? So the impression I got (without even watching the others) was that this film had elements of that, but much much less.
Of course the Hulot character probably will stay the same – and I hope so!
Perhaps it’s the in-your-face-Frenchness that made me feel like the Hulot character feel so different from Chaplin or Keaton. Speaking of Chaplin, I suppose you have seen “A King in New York”? That one is awesome.
So what exactly did you find irritating about Chaplin of Keaton movies?
i haven’t seen “A King in New York” but i think i have it on DVD!
not sure where the irritation stems from – i borrowed a friend’s masters of cinema collection of keaton shorts and i thought they were hilarious and infectious to watch, but when i got to his feature films (the general, steamboat bill jr.) i just seemed to lose interest. with chaplin, it’s a little different – i basically don’t dislike a single film by him, but after seeing Limelight and Monsieur Verdoux i just found it hard to go back to his tramp-silents without wishing that he’d have made many more talkies! xxD so to sum up my opinion regarding the two of them: i think keaton’s shorts were funnier than anything else he’d done and chaplin made two talkies of such cinematic brilliance as to leave me wondering why people don’t talk about them more often xD
Hahaha ohhh I see. Well I remember that I was first irritated at “A King in New York” because its story was so in-your-face political and I didn’t find it believable how he got out of one huge problem right into another.
But oh God, I only saw one Keaton short (“One Week”) and a few others with Fatty Arbuckle, and then I only saw one of his features, “The General”. The first time I saw it, I wasn’t that impressed and the second time, in a large cinema with live music and lots of laughing people, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really think silents work better in cinemas.
So yeah, I totally need to see “Limelight” and “Monsieur Verdoux” now. XXXD