“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” is a film Charlie Chaplin would’ve made in the ’30s. It’s essentially a silent film with minimal dialogue and sound only used in effects to underscore a gag. It’s charm and its set pieces are reminiscent of one of those silent era stragglers, and like Chaplin and the Tramp or Keaton and his stone-faced characters, its protagonist Mr. Hulot would become a more recognizable identity than the man and director who portrayed him in four films, Jacques Tati.
Tati only made five theatrical features in his career, and “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” his second film, was the one that introduced his alter-ego to the world, never to go back. But Tati’s legacy still lives on long after his death, now in the form of an unfilmed screenplay since made into the animated film “The Illusionist” (by the director of “The Triplets of Belleville”).
This film is famous because of it’s elegant charms. It’s laughs are simplistic in nature but still carefully constructed. We meet Hulot as he drives a sputtering, twirpy and slow car to reach his vacation destination, and when he steps out, he’s a tall, lanky, awkward man. Every step he takes seems deliberate, his hat is pulled down ever so slightly, and his quirks, like saluting an address over a radio, are all enough to make a great silent, French clown.
The film doesn’t attempt to thrill us with stunts the way Keaton would or move us with romance the way Chaplin would. In fact, he’s more like the everyman Harold Lloyd, the third great silent film star of the era. My favorite bit of Hulot’s is when he builds a boat, first painting it on the shore as the tide takes the paint can out to sea and then sends it back on his opposite side just as he reaches for more paint. He then gets in the boat on the ocean and has it collapse on him, sandwiching him in the middle to the point that as he flaps to escape, it resembles a shark approaching the beach.
It’s not precisely a laugh out loud moment, and nothing in the film is. But everything odd that seems to happen so smoothly is purposeful as its underscored by a playful jazz score and xylophone.
“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” is a cute movie without any complications or deeper meanings. I look forward to watching “Mon Oncle” or “Playtime” and revisiting Monsieur Hulot once more.