Mon Oncle - Criterion Collection

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A comic masterpiece from director-star Jacques Tati (Playtime, Traffic), this 1958 film--Tati's first in color--reprises the carefree, oblivious title character from the director's hilarious international hit Mr. Hulot's Holiday. This time, the story finds Hulot, a self-involved twit on a constant collision with the physical world, grappling with 1950s-style progress. Visiting his sister and brother-in-law in their ultra-progressive household full of noisy gadgets and futuristic decor, Hulot inevitably has dust-ups with modernity, each one exceptionally funny. Taking a page from Buster Keaton's playbook, Tati also employs his trademark techniques with sound and production design to achieve the indefinable, comic genius of his films: the rhythmic clacking of footsteps, the cartoon-panel distance of his camera frame from the heart of the action. (Why are funny things funnier when seen from a few extra feet away?) Tati is one of the cinema's great treasures, and this movie is unforgettable. --Tom Keogh

Description

Slapstick prevails when Jacques Tati's eccentric hero Monsieur Hulot is let loose in the ultramodern house of his brother-in-law, and in an antiseptic factory that manufactures plastic hose. Tati directs and stars in the second entry of the Hulot series, a delightful satire of mechanized living. Academy Award winner, Best Foreign Film.

Customer Reviews:

THIS IS EB BEST OF THE HULOT SERIES .......2007-08-23

I LOVED MR HUOT'S VACATION, BUT ONE ONCLE TO ME IS THE FUNNIEST OF THE HOT SERIES. I LOVED THE PRETENTIOUSNESS OF THE BOURGEOISIE, AND THE PANNING OR THE PLASTIC HOUS AND THE REAL LIVING QUARTERS ON THE FRENCH. ALSO,HOW THE LITTLE DOG AND MON. HULOT'S NEWPHEW ACCEPTED THE REAL WORLD, AND NOT THE PLATIC ONE CREATED BY HIS FATHER.
THIS A MUST SEE!!!!!

"Better" is no good if a child doesn't go with it.......2007-07-23

In the aftermath of WWII, most western world faced similar problems. Large scale urban planning and large scale industrial projects seemed common answers. It's Tati's intuition, transposed in this 1959 film, that captured how fit these answers have become. Now, with all the social unrest and physical decay in socially engineered urban centers, we can see that those answers were temporary fixes at best. At a different level, it shows the limitations of rational approaches to social re-engineering.

The elements of this film can almost be divided neatly in any pair of the following categories: Old and New; Chaos, Order; Emotional, Rational; Organic, Synthetic; Myriad of unwritten rules, Clear and specified rules; and on and on. Common between any two opposing categories are a social misfit, a child, and a dog. Socially, they belong to parallel categories, yet they enter each other's realm by literally passing through a broken brick-wall. The misfit is Mr. Hulot, who belongs to the old world--played here by the director himslef, Jacques Tati. The child is Mr. Hulot's nephew, who lives with his well-off parents and the dog in a house/society of the future, as imagined by the forward-thinking minds of the moment. Nobody seems well adjusted to the synthetic world yet it is only the child who shows it without restraint. At least Mr. Hulot is the typical misfit, no matter what world he lives in. This remains so, despite the serial mishap befallen unto the inhabitants of the new world, until the end of the film when, led by a string of events, the father of the child is re-humanized by a prank; ...the same type of prank his son was enjoying in the dis-orderly world of Mr. Hulot.

In the end, we can try to do it all in the name of some progress or another, but if a child (or a dog) doesn't go with it, we have a warning sign. And, at times, an artist comes along and, through artistic production and intuition, is able to look further ahead than most. In 1959, that artist was the director and actor Jacques Tati.

A Masterpiece of French Cinema.......2007-07-15

"Mon Oncle" is the 2nd film in the highly acclaimed "Hulot" series and is, arguably, the best. How qualified I am to say that, I don't know. I've seen "M. Hulot's Holiday" and now I've seen "Mon Oncle," but that still leaves "Playtime" and "Traffic." I'm confident with my choice though. "Mon Oncle" was released 5 years after "M. Hulot's Holiday" and won the Best Foreign Film Oscar. It's also in color as opposed to the black & white of the earlier film, but it's in color for good reason. Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot is very much like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp. The same character in every film only in a different situation and sporting a slightly different personality. In "M. Hulot's Holiday," Monsieur Hulot was the protagonist. A happy and simple man who was on vacation and just happened to wreak havoc almost everywhere he went. In "Mon Oncle," Hulot is, in the words of Roger Ebert, "a lost soul, unemployed, bemused, and confused..." That's true, because in the first film the surroundings seemed to fit Hulot. Even the light, happy jazz score seemed to fit the man. The world in which "Mon Oncle" takes place is exactly where Hulot does not belong. In this film, Hulot lives at the top of a large building, which actually appears to be two buildings. He lives near his sister Madame Arpel (Adrienne Servantie) and his brother-in-law Monsieur Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola). Monsieur Arpel works at a plant called Plastac that manufactures plastic hose. While Monsieur Arpel works at getting Hulot a job and Madame Arpel works on getting him a girlfriend, Hulot spends time with their young son Gerard (Alain Becourt) who spends his time hanging out with a group of delinquents who make the town miserable for many of the adults. In his simplicity, Hulot is understood by only one person in the film and that person is Gerard (go figure, huh?). Any person who talks about this film will mention the brilliant art/set direction by Henri Schmitt. The film takes place in a very modern world that does not fit the simplistic mind of Hulot and the sets brilliantly illustrate how out of place he is in this world. One of the best gags of the film comes from the fact that Monsieur and Madame Arpel have a fish fountain in their yard that they immediately turn on whenever company arrives. In one early scene, Monsieur Arpel arrives home and Madame Arpel (not knowing it's her husband) rushes to turn the fountain on before he yells, "it's only me!" While "M. Hulot's Holiday" was largely a silent film, with only the score and occasional dialogue being on the soundtrack; "Mon Oncle" contains quite a bit of dialogue. I've heard many people say it's just as silent as "M. Hulot's Holiday" and maybe (with a 30 minute longer running time) it is, but there's a lot more dialogue here. "M. Hulot's Holiday" was a comedy, in the way that Chaplin's "The Circus" was. "Mon Oncle" has many comedic moments, but has a sad mood to it more in the vein of Chaplin's "City Lights" I guess. Tati was a genius and a perfectionist and with "Mon Oncle" had crafted a near-perfect film.

GRADE: A

Mon Oncle.......2007-06-26

France's answer to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, comic genius Jacques Tati leads us on an uproarious trek through the futuristic 1950s in "Mon Oncle," his first color feature. With hardly any dialogue, Tati orchestrates one hilarious pratfall sequence after another, involving everything from wild gizmos to click-clacking high heels, and even a downbeat dachsund. Like Chaplin, Tati was a perfectionist, and the Oscar-winning "Mon Oncle" is exactly that: A perfect collision of madcap slapstick and social satire, with a Tramp-like heart.

I wish I had had an uncle like this one! .......2007-05-07

Once again, I must thank the Criterion Collection for adding an additional Jacques Tati film to their film family. MON ONCLE is definitely a classic. In this installment, M. Hulot (Jacques Tati) visits his progressive brother and sister at their home, best-described as "post-Modern" (in my words). They have a fountain with a spitting fish statue in the center, a very high tech kitchen that solves the basic "problems" that exist in that part of the household with so-called "labor saving" gadgets (that, of course, go haywire when in the hands of Hulot), and a tiny, billigerent pet Dauchshaund in a little plaid sweater. I would be billigerent, too, if I had to live with all of that madness!

This film isn't so much a comedy as a social commentary with humorous moments. The story takes a very candid look at modern technology and its effect on the nation of France, through the eyes of the hapless M. Hulot. I love it and I reccomend it to everyone (be they Francophiles, comedy fans, or anyone with a pulse!).

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