Review of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953) by Edith N — 22 Jan 2012

Whimsy Tinged With Nostalgia.

I have told this story before, but allow me to tell it again. I had not previously seen the entire movie, but I saw the beginning of it one fine day in Spanish class. Our teacher was out for the day, and we had a substitute. I'd seen him around campus, but we'd never spoken; half of us assumed he was a student. He arrived some ten minutes late. He let us in. He did not take roll; he spoke not a word. He set up Mr. Liden's TV and put this in, then sat back and watched it. I assume that second period watched the second part of the movie, though I never did find out. It did not, obviously, have much to do with what I was learning--there is little dialogue, and it's all in French and English. But that was my introduction to Mike Culross and Jacques Tati, and I've never had cause to regret getting to know either of them. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that it was Mike who introduced me to this and not Raul.

This was, in fact, the world's introduction to that bewildered observer of modern life, Monsieur Hulot. (I call him "[i]monsieur[/i]" even when referring to the movie in English, but this seems to be just me.) This is what happens to him when he takes a vacation by the seaside. There is not much of a plot, just a Bunch of Stuff That Happens, but the most coherent version is that M. Hulot and assorted others are spending their vacation in a seaside hotel where not much happens. M. Hulot appears to be wooing the lovely young Martine (Nathalie Pascaud), the only single young woman in the area. He also spends time with The Englishwoman (Valentine Camax) and is the vexation of The Waiter (Raymond Carl). Other than that, we merely watch a series of misadventures play out. The film is full of the kind of people you encounter at quiet seaside resorts, and the things which happen are the kinds of things which happen to that sort of person.

Well, mostly. There's what is actually a marginally terrifying sequence in which M. Hulot attempts to go riding with Martine. He gets a horse which is a little feistier than he knows how to handle, and it kicks the back of a car, trapping a man in the rumble seat. For a brief moment, it looks as though he was beheaded. Martine (who does not appear to get a name in the movie but does on the IMDB page) goes riding off placidly as though nothing is wrong, but she's gone before this happens. She is moderately put out that M. Hulot isn't with her, but she doesn't really know what's going on. Whereas M. Hulot does, is convinced he's killed the man, and runs away--but stays close enough so he can peek through a cabana door and watch what's going on. He's afraid, I think, that he's going to go to prison, but he's determined to find out for sure. In fact, throughout the movie, he is morbidly determined to see things through to the end, no matter how badly they might be going for him.

Gwen doesn't watch French movies with subtitles, because she feels as though she can usually translate at least some of it better herself, even if she doesn't catch all of it. And to be sure, I don't know how accurate the subtitles are here. However, I don't think it matters through most of the movie. Most of the movie might as well be silent. The whimsical nature of things does not rely on wordplay. It relies on images. M. Hulot seldom speaks, and indeed the first subtitle doesn't come until about ten minutes into the film. Instead, we have such things as the comic interplay wherein M. Hulot is trying to change a tire and ends up crashing a funeral. There is that great moment wherein we first see the water, a moment everyone can recognize from their childhood vacations even if they didn't go to the beach--the moment of "we're here!" The cry of the ice cream man. Mischievous children. Over-dressed mothers. Fathers trying to have fun but getting called to the phone for business. Vacation.

Roger says rewatching this movie is like going on vacation somewhere you go before, the kind of hotel where this is set. It's as though you're encountering people you have before. I wouldn't know; we never took that kind of vacation, and the camp I went to, while full of the same people year after year, was also full of the people I saw in school. But I will say there is a familiarity to this movie all the same. You can often see the shape of the story before it finishes playing out onscreen. (Yes, I've seen it before, but only half of it and nearly twenty years ago!) Tati had his roots in clowning and mime, and it is the familiarity of those two artforms which gives the movie its shape. Even if we've never actually been on this particular vacation, we feel as though we have. Even if you don't believe the "aquatic ape" hypothesis, you have to admit that there is just something about a seaside vacation which is familiar to even those people who have never been on one.