M. Hulot's Vacation
Mr. Hulot=s Vacation (Tati, 1953) is a French comedy with a light touch.The film seems to exist in a time-warp of sorts, depicting a period whenFrench and British tourists mingled on the beach at small resorts withlittle pretension to be big resorts. The technique of the film isobservational from first to last, as if someone had left a camera out onthe beach and waited for the roaming M. Hulot to come among and behaveoddly in the face of all the different problems associated with a short From the opening frames of the waves quietly coming into shore, thefilm has an easy-going attitude which suggests a vacation, and while muchgoes wrong in the course of the film, it is generally of a much quietersort of chaos than would be seen in the average American film about avacation going wrong. The film is essentially a silent film, with muchowed to the works of Chaplin in America and Max Linder in France, but it isnot really a silent film and makes clever use of sound to convey meaning,create and sustain a mood, and point out contrasting attitudes from momentto moment. For instance, the quiet opening marked only by the soothingmusic and the even more soothing sound of the waves washing asho
Tati does not make much use of a moving camera except in themost rudimentary way, usually a pan to one side or the other or a followingshort distance down the street for a short instance. He also seems to be an outsider in the world of objects,a man who does not get along with anything that can stick to him, break onhim, or fall over in his presence. In this regard, Tati shares a good deal with Chaplin, who also seemedalways to be at the mercy of the external physical world and its array ofobjects. Thecharacter of Hulot is one of the strengths of the film, a man unflappablein the worst circumstances, in part because he always seems to believehimself to be somewhere else. Alan Williamscites its Acarefree spirit and breathtaking grace@ (Williams 318), twocharacteristics which do indeed describe the antics of the distracted M. Hulot=s Holiday in the British and Americanversion, partly because of the British use of that word, and partly becauseof the alliteration) was released in 1953 and produced in 1952. Tati is very modern in the way he behaves in front of the camerarather than acting or posing, and this is true of the other actors in thefilm as well. Tati=s inventive use of sound is apparent in thisopening as well, for the calls of the train conductor are mere electronicgrunts, too difficult to hear to be called a language. The silentnature of the film adds to this sense, leaving him always as the outsiderin human society. As with the neorelists, this gives the film a sense ofreality, as does the key method of filming B- Tati places the camera wherehe wants it and observed what happens around it. American critic Roger Ebert finds in the film a humanity that ismissing from much comedy, and here again, the film shares this with greatsilent comedians like Chaplin and Keaton. British critic Jamie Russell says of this aspect ofthe film, As with all the best slapstick, Tati's theme is the cruelty of the physical world. He achieves this in the film whilemaintaining a certain aplomb that adds to the humor. Maddock notes that Tati uses a simplicity of story structure thatAsets hi apart from other filmmakers@ because he has Ano pretensions to anyelaborate plot devices in order to present his gags@ (Maddock 3).
Common topics in this essay:
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Acceptance Essays
