Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 08/23/17

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)

Monsieur Hulot: Jacques Tati
Martine: Natalie Pascaud
The Aunt: Micheline Rolla
Englishwoman: Valentine Camax
Hotel Proprietor: Lucien Frégis
Waiter: Raymond Carl

Director: Jacques Tati
Screenplay: Pierre Aubert, Jacques Lagrange, Henri Marquet, Jacques Tati
Cinematography: Jacques Mercanton, Jean Mousselle
Music: Alain Romans

One of the delights of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday is that Hulot himself is part of an ensemble. It's not just a showcase for Jacques Tati's gifts as a physical comedian. While Hulot is the presumed focus of the movie, with his stiff-legged bouncing gait and his pipe-forward ambling, the world around him is as sweetly eccentric as he is. From the opening scenes with the holiday-bound crowds rushing from one railway platform to the other, confused by the comically garbled announcements, to the sardine-packed bus whose driver discovers a small boy thrusting his head up between the spokes of the steering wheel, Tati the director swiftly establishes the satiric thrust of the film: the bourgeoisie determined to have fun even if it kills them. Monsieur Hulot's Holiday is not gut-bustingly funny. Instead it's an assemblage of drolleries: slapstick moments like Hulot getting shut up in a folding canoe and being mistaken for a shark, mixed with smile-inducing bits like the strolling couple, she cheerfully leading him on excursions he clearly doesn't enjoy, as when she delightedly picks up shells, cooing over their beauty, which he tosses away once her back is turned. All of it is sweetened by a skillfully crafted soundtrack, from Hulot's wheezing and rattling auto to the irruptions of radio broadcasts in the hotel to the poink of the swinging door at the entrance to the dining room. I happen to think that the restored 114-minute version, assembled by Tati before his death, may be a bit too long, but there are many who can't get too much Hulot.

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