Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot

Jacques Tati

T. it.: Le vacanze di Monsieur Hulot; Scen., dial.: Jacques Tati, Henri Marquet, con la collaborazione di Pierre Aubert, Jacques Lagrange; F.: Jacques Mercanton, Jean Mousselle; Mo.: Jacques Grassi, Ginou Bretoneiche, Suzanne Baron; Scgf.: Henri Schmitt, Roger Briaucourt; Mu.: Alain Romans; Su.: Jacques Carrère, Roger Cosson; Int.: Jacques Tati (Monsieur Hulot), Nathalie Pascaud (Martine), Louis Perrault (Fred), Micheline Rolla (la zia di Martine), André Dubois (il comandante), Suzy Willy (la sposa del comandante), Valentine Camax (la signora inglese), Lucien Frégis (l’albergatore), Raymond Carl (il cameriere), Georges Adlin (il latin lover sudamericano), Michelle Brabo (la villeggiante), René Lacourt (il passeggiatore), Marguerite Gérard (la donna che passeggia); Prod.: Fred Orain per Cady-Films; Pri. pro.: 25 febbraio 1953 35mm. D.: 88’. Bn. 

info_outline
T. it.: Italian title. T. int.: International title. T. alt.: Alternative title. Sog.: Story. Scen.: Screenplay. F.: Cinematography. M.: Editing. Scgf.: Set Design. Mus.: Music. Int.: Cast. Prod.: Production Company. L.: Length. D.: Running Time. f/s: Frames per second. Bn.: Black e White. Col.: Color. Da: Print source

Film Notes

Here’s a naïve question: what does Mr Hulot do when he’s not on holiday? Does he have an activity? A profession? We know virtually nothing about him. He’s only a silhouette, a moving sketch of a man. This is his lot from film to film. His car, a spluttering, cheerfully antiquated motorcar, is steadfastly eccentric. Like its driver. The license plate reads 8244 AK 75. So Hulot is Parisian. We don’t know much more. Hulot has driven out to this picturesque Brittany seaside town, where, like the other holiday goers, he usually stays at the Hôtel de la Plage. One of the film’s many qualities is to endear us to boarding house life. The bell strikes at the same hours, everyone hurries back from the beach and gathers in the hotel dining room. Greetings are exchanged; eyes meet across tables, guests brush past one another without touching. Tati’s cinema is about the art of not touching (too much). When Hulot serves on the tennis court in that efficient if peculiar style of his, his adversary is unable to return the serve. Here’s a hypothesis to consider: Hulot doesn’t create a sense of otherness, but one of avoidance. Failure. Just like at the
ping pong table, where the game is played out of frame. It’s hard to imagine Hulot not on holiday. He is not defined by work but by an inborn capacity to sow disorder, to gently disturb the peace. Which doesn’t stop him from being hyperactive. He is rarely separated from his fishing rod, just as he will never be without his umbrella in Playtime. Hulot always looks busy, even if he walks with his head in the clouds. He’s a Cartesian diver, an eternal child in an adult body. The notion of work is important in Tati’s world. Work is his obsession, as it obsesses his characters. With one important nuance: everyone works at his own rhythm, in a kind of fragmented, unproductive general economy. Nothing is produced. What matters is the posture, the gestures, which are a source of gags. The characters in Mr Hulot’s Holyday proceed at their own pace, an individual energy in constant collision with that of others, at the risk of creating sparks, short circuits (the brilliant climax of the fireworks). In the hotel restaurant, the waiter is slow because there is always something in his path between the kitchen and the dining room, an obstacle, a lull, an unexpected event that disturbs any smooth movements. Tati or the art of choreography. It gets worse in Playtime, where the principle of general inefficiency dominates. It’s Hulot who, in the Royal Garden restaurant, sparks off the crisis. The foundation of cinema according to Tati: the elaboration of the gag, the mise en scene, the meticulous study of gesture, the sense of balance and imbalance, all this obeys a principle of expenditure, provided that this expenditure creates no new energy. Therein lies the subtlety of Tati’s films. Mr. Hulot is never prisoner of the meanings his attitudes engender. He owes everything to a never-ending lightness, with his hat, his fishing rod and his umbrella. His silhouette moves between the drops of reality. From gag to gag, Hulot’s silhouette returns to what it must remain. Hulot comes out unharmed, in his true colors. Unshakeable in his visceral failure to adjust to the world, he nonetheless exposes its unconscious or invisible mechanisms. Mr. Hulot allows the world of humans and objects to exist, move, make noise and show the audience the clockwork movement that regulates the universe. Without himself getting bogged down in any moral and physical responsibility that would make him a spokesman or critical conscience. Hulot is innocent, he doesn’t judge others, just as others don’t judge him. Just gauged. Everyone knows Tati’s film are more about sounds than words. The memory and nostalgia of silent movies underlines them in a caustic, euphoric manner. Music plays a crucial role. It is not (only) background music, it deeply stamps the film’s rhythm like a ritornello. Think of the one in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday: tatati-tata, tatati-tata… The ritornello is a melody that keeps coming back and which stays in the mind. Its gentle melancholy haunts you. What does mr. Hulot do at the end of the film, when the holiday is over? He gets into his spluttering car. He’ll be back next summer, like the other hotel guests. Holidays were made for him. He understand their subtleties and most of all the art of living.

Serge Toubiana, Managing Director of the Cinémathèque Française

In the early 60s, Jacques Tati re-edited the film, cutting out shots and extending others. He had Alan Roman’s score re-orchestrated and overhauled the music and sound mixing. It was at this point he also added the final color shot of the stamp and postmark, indicating the postman invisible hand. In 1978, inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Tati shot new footage on the beach at St-Marc-sur-Mer, which he then cut into the last version. In 1951, it began the shooting of Mr Hulot’s Holiday, during this historic transitional period. The camera negative is a blend of mostly nitrate film stock and acetate film stock. In order to protect the camera negative, it was crucial to have it restored manually by the Preservation Department of Technicolor North Hollywood. The interpositive made, it was scanned to assemble the complete cut of the film with the addition of the opening credits and the insertion of the final shot, the only color shot. It was indeed this question of balance between photochemical and digital procedures that had to be dealt with. A major part of the restoration involved the improvement or toning down of the transitions between shots. The nitrate base of the picture negative played a dominant role in preserving the original tones of the black and white movie. The restoration of the soundtrack allowed us to bring back the entire sound range and rhythmic accents of Tati’s film and the restoration was based on the sound negative using the film’s last mix (the 1978 version).

Synthesis of the text by Loubna Régragui (Fondation Thomson), Hervé Pichard (Cinémathèque Française), Philippe Gigot (Les Films de Mon Oncle), Tom Burton (Technicolor).

Copy From

Print restored by La Fondation Thomson pour le Patrimoine du Cinéma et de la Television, La Fondation Groupama Gan, Les Films de Mon Oncle and La Cinémathèque française from the original negatives