Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1690 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-11-29
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 84 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Forefather of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot--a recurring character in several of his movies--is a blithely clumsy troublemaker, an insouciant twit who leaves uproar in his wake without being aware of it. Trying to describe this 1953 comedy is next to impossible except to say it is a series of vignettes at a vacation resort, with the distracted Hulot providing a lot of laughs. Tati directs, and in a way what that really means is that he composes this movie with a perfect eye and ear for the comic possibilities in everything: composition, lighting, minimal marble-mouth dialogue, certain sounds (a duck call, a door repeatedly opening and shutting). This is a superior work that ranks among all-time classic comedies. --Tom Keogh

Synopsis
Jacques Tati, master of his own idiosyncratic genre of cinematic slapstick, followed up his acclaimed debut JOUR DE F-TE with the equally ingenious MR. HULOT'S HOLIDAY. Five years in the making, the film marks the debut of Tati's altar ego, Mr. Hulot, a gangly and awkward Frenchman, perpetually the center and possible cause of a whirlwind of disasters, pratfalls, and mishaps. Tati's scrupulous attention to detail and almost arabesque sense of humor colors the entire film, from the departure of a gaggle of tourists from a malfunctioning train station to the minutiae of resort life. In place of a plot, a series of disastrous coincidences, surreal sight gags and irascible indignations erupt around Mr. Hulot as he gallantly and obliviously strolls through his seaside vacation. While he tries to impress a lovely ingenue, Hulot inadvertently barges in on a funeral, ignites a fireworks stand with his pipe, and topples a Ming vase, rarely realizing the extent of the damage he causes. Tati expertly crafts the visual bombast of traditional slapstick into a beautiful and intricate sequence of incidents, accompanied by an equally elegant and intriguing seaside soundtrack of lapping waves, laughing children and transistor radios, all merging into an absurd symphony of cinematic delight.

Customer Reviews

Timeless gentle humour - a classic
Mr Hulot's Holiday is simply one of the funniest films you'll ever see. In a series of hilarious episodes the blundering Hulot unwittingly causes havoc in a seaside resort. Tati's genius for mime is breathtaking at times - the perfect slapstick timing of Laurel & Hardy without the melodramatics. There is shrewd social observation and a host of real characters with endearing quirks and habits. There are so many visually comic ideas that you only become aware of them after many viewings. A film which holds you in a spell and generates timeless comedy at no-one's expense.

Mon sieur Hulot's Holiday
The one drawback in this film, as currently available, is that the superb original 1953 soundtrack, with its totally appropriate background by Aimé Barelli and his orchestra, a dreamy slow-foxtrot, is replaced in the 1960s remake by a quite inappropriate, jumpety, higgledy music which is completely at odds with the 1953 original.

Comedy at it's best
The innocence of a single french man on holiday is what this film is all about. Tati is (or was) without doubt the greatest minimalist comic of all time. Only he can make painting a boat an absolute riot, only he can make a very sombre funeral into a timeless classic of comedy history. This man is one of the unsung heroes of comedy and if he was not the inspiration behind Mr Bean then 'je suis un oncle des singe' (bad french I know).
The absolute tragedy is that all of Tati's films are so difficult (closer to impossible) to get on DVD, Laurel and Hardy = no problem, Charlie Chaplin = no problem, Jacques Tati = BIG PROBLEM, This is a great film, this is a classic (as are all his films. Let's get em out on DVD. Even my Dutch girlfriend, who claims that she is not a fan of comedy films, laughs at this film, let's get it on DVD....