What to Watch If You Liked Monsieur Hulot's Holiday?

Seventy summers have passed since the release of Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953). Cinema Paradiso celebrates the best seaside sojourn in screen history.

Cinema Paradiso had staycations in mind when we brought you the Top 10 British Seaside Summer Movies. But with the weather being so unpredictable on these shores during the summer of 2023, we've decided to venture further afield to a little hideaway on France's north-western coast, where an angular fellow in a soft hat and half-mast trousers made such an impression that they erected a 6ft 8in bronze statue on the esplanade in his honour.

The Picture Framer's Son

Born on 9 October 1907, Jacques Tatischeff had French, Italian, Dutch, and Russian grandparents. Father Georges-Emmanuel was the son of a count who was serving as a military attaché at the Russian embassy in Paris when he met Rose Alinquant, who was reportedly a circus performer. As his father had died in a suspicious riding accident, Georges-Emmanuel had to take an apprenticeship at Cadres Van Hoof, the picture framers for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent Van Gogh, who were respectively played by José Ferrer and Kirk Douglas in John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and Vincente Minnelli's Lust For Life (1956).

Having married the boss's daughter, Claire, Georges-Emmanuel became a prominent member of the firm and, consequently, Jacques was raised in some comfort. However, he proved to be an indifferent student and left school at 16. Following military service in the 16th Dragoons, he spent time in London, where he became a keen rugby player and discovered a talent for mime while amusing his teammates at Racing Club de France.

Against his family's wishes, Tati entered music hall just as the Great Depression hit France. In fact, he made his first films, Oscar, champion de tennis (1932) and On demande une brute (1934), before venturing on to the boards. The former has been lost forever, but the latter paired Tati with a clown named Rhum, with whom he reunited - after Gai dimanche (1935) - on René Clément's Soigne ton gauche (1936) before Tati made his name with an act comprised of sporting impersonations. He would reprise some of these in Parade (1974) and often returned to his early shorts to recycle the better gags. These trial runs for the structures and techniques that would make Tati's features so distinctive can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray on The Short Films of Jacques Tati.

Just as Tati was establishing himself and was looking forward to a booking at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Germany invaded Poland. He very nearly perished in farcical fashion during the Phoney War. Having been called up as a cavalry reservist, he was detained one night in an ill-fitting uniform without his papers and was accused of being a spy because of his Russian surname and fondness for foreign underwear. He later liked to claim that his hair went white during his night in the cells, but he was released once his unit vouched for him and saw action at the Battle of Sedan in 1940.

As Tati didn't talk much about his wartime exploits, it's only known for certain that he returned to Paris after the Occupation to perform his Impressions sportives. He also fathered a daughter named Helga with dancer Herta Schiel before abandoning them to decamp to Sainte-Sévère-sur-Inde in order to avoid conscription under the forced labour scheme, Service du travail obligatoire. More a survivor than a hero, Tati might have become an overnight superstar in 1945, as Marcel Carné considered casting him when Jean-Louis Barrault's Comédie Française commitments looked likely to keep him out of Les Enfants du paradis. But Barrault took the role of Baptiste Duburau, leavingTati to content himself with minor supports in Claude Autant-Lara's Sylvie et le fantôme (1946) and Le Diable au corps (1947).

However, producer Fred Orain had been taken with Tati and proposed a series of comic shorts starting with L'École des facteurs. Such was its success that Tati persuaded Orain to fund a feature variation on the theme and he returned to Sainte-Sévère to make Jour de Fête (both 1947). In addition to playing François the dimwitted postman, Tati also turned director and created a satire on progress, rural living, and Franco-American relations that dispensed with traditional storylines and replaced dialogue with a sonic realism that was to become a trademark. He also cast non-actors and experimented with the new Thomsoncolor stock. However, the company went bust before the film could be developed and Tati was forced to release a monochrome version he had shot as a backup.

He had animator Paul Grimault use the Scopachrome process to add colour to the flags and an artist's palette when he revisited the picture in the early 1960s. But the original negative remained untouched until editor daughter Sophie Tatischeff used state-of-the-art technology to develop and release her own Thomsoncolor cut in 1995.

There are elements of Tati in François, but he never returned to the role. Instead, he adopted the alter ego he would play for the remainder of his career in the feature that would not only revolutionise screen comedy, but also cinema itself: Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953).

What M. Hulot Did on His Holiday

As Atlantic waves break over rocks and a boat rests on the tideline at a seaside village on the Breton coast, train passengers are sent scurrying between platforms by a station announcer. Meanwhile, a 1924 Amilcar makes haphazard progress through the surrounding countryside. Weaving to avoid other traffic, the rickety vehicle emits periodic exhaust eruptions, although it doesn't seem to bother a dog that lies down in the road as it approaches.

Having come with her aunt (Micheline Rolla) to stay with relations, Martine (Nathalie Pascaud) unpacks and gazes at the beach from her balcony window. Across the road stands the Hôtel de la Plage, which is run by the proprietor (Lucien Frégis) and a grumpy waiter (Raymond Carl). Guests are assembled in the lounge when Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) ganglingly stalks in on the tips of his toes and allows a gale to blow through the front door. Papers fly everywhere, while the stream of tea bends from a spout and misses a cup and one man has his moustache ruffled. Oblivious to the fuss and the bad news being broadcast on the radio, Hulot returns with a second load of luggage and has to have the pipe removed from his lips so that he can give his name at the reception desk. He's immediately regarded as an outsider, although he tries to ingratiate himself by bowing politely to the female guests before heading to his attic room with a skylight in the roof.

Still striving to fit in, Hulot takes his place for supper in the dining-room with a glass door that thunks with each swing. The waiter is unimpressed when Hulot hands him his pipe and hat, which winds up being deposited on the end of a walking stick that happens to be jutting up beside the coat rack. As the guests settle in for the night, an ageing couple (René Lacourt and Marguerite Gérard) takes the first of many strolls.

Next morning, the record that Martine plays in her bedroom accompanies the beach scene, where a small boy is causing trouble with a magnifying glass. Schmutz (Jean-Pierre Zola), a businessman and amateur photographer, is called to the phone, as Hulot is suspected of having unspooled a winch and allowed a boat being painted to slide into the sea. Drying himself awkward against a pole, Hulot scarpers behind a beach hut and hopes the commotion dies down.

Emerging to become preoccupied by a drooping wodge of toffee hanging off an ice cream cart, Hulot goes to the dining-room, where he keeps reaching across his tablemate in order to grab the condiments. The boss slices ham according to the girth of the patrons, while the door kerflubs above the rhubarbed hubbub.

After lunch, Hulot helps Martine's aunt with a heavy suitcase, only to miss his footing and go careering through the entire house and out the back door. As Schmutz leaves a family posing for a snapshot while he beetles off to take a call, Hulot happens upon a tennis courts and amuses a middle-aged Englishwoman (Valentine Camax) when he disturbs a slumbering clergyman while retrieving a stray ball. He gives her a lift back in his car and annoys a bus driver by failing to give hand signals as he pulls over.

Hulot causes a post-prandial racket by playing a jazz record at full volume and the hotel is plunged into darkness when a guest pulls the plug. Looking on in dismay, the manager drops his pen in the fish tank and rolls up his sleeve to recover it. However, he is distracted and plunges his jacketed arm into the water instead. The patrons settle for the evening, but Hulot can't resist helping a female scout (Nicole Chomo) with a heavy rucksack. He struggles up a hill where her friends are having a party, but forgets he's still got the bag on his shoulders and staggers backwards through the open door during an elaborate toasting ritual. By the time the girl notices he's missing, Hulot is scrambling back up the slope looking sheepish.

The following morning, Hulot strides off with some paints and a paddle. On the beach, he entangles himself with a keep-fit instructor before kicking Schmutz up the backside in the mistaken belief that he's peeping into Martine's bathing hut. In fact, he's bending over his tripod to take a picture and Hulot beats a hasty retreat when Schmutz comes looking for the perpetrator (and, naturally, corners the wrong man). Sitting in a kayak on the sand, Hulot starts daubing and can't fathom why his paint pot keeps bobbing from side to side on the gentle tide. When he takes to the water, the kayak folds in on itself and seems to resemble a sea creature when the commandant (André Dubois) surveys the horizon through his binoculars.

Returning to the hotel with wet shoes, Hulot hides behind the coat rack to prevent the proprietor from catching him leaving footprints on the wooden floor. That afternoon, he offers Fred (Louis Pérault) a lift after he misses his bus. However, the Amilcar's canvas roof falls down and Hulot takes an unintended detour into the cemetery. In order to rummage in the boot, he lays the spare tyre on a leaf-strewn path, only for it to be mistaken for a wreath. It deflates after being hung beside the gravestone and Hulot gets the giggles after the feather on a lady's hat tickles his nose while standing in the condolence line.

Undaunted by the episode, Hulot buys a newspaper and, much to the chagrin of a politically earnest student (Pierre Aubert), he fashions it into a hat and sets out for the tennis courts. Having been given a brief tutorial by the woman shopkeeper selling him a racquet, Hulot bamboozles all-comers with his off-puttingly quirky, but fiendishly effective thrusting service action. The Englishwoman cheers him on from the umpire's chair, while Martine smiles at his ungainly unplayability, while trying to ignore the chat-up lines of a keen swain.

Hulot walks Martine back to her digs and arranges to go riding next morning. After dinner, the small boy who had liked Hulot's service style challenges him to a game of table tennis and keeps sending his opponent hopscotching back into the lounge in order to play elaborate defensive shots. When the ball rolls past him, Hulot disturbs everyone while searching for it and ruins card games at adjoining tables by turning the chair of a South American bridge partner (Georges Adlin) who slams down a card between two men playing cribbage. Once again, Hulot has no idea of the furore he has caused, as he heads for bed.

During their customary morning walk, the husband tosses away the seashells that his wife finds among the rocks. Meanwhile, Hulot has trouble with his horse, which kicks shut the rumble seat of a parked car, trapping a male passenger inside. Taking cover before anyone can accuse him, Hulot has to let Martine go riding alone. However, he keeps darting out from behind a beach hut door to catch the sagging taffy on the nearby ice cream cart. A small boy comes up to purchase two cones and totters up some steep steps and opens a heavy door without any spillage before scrambling on to a chair to lick quietly with his brother while watching the hotel owner put up some bunting for a masked ball.

That evening, while the others gather to listen to a radio speech about the spending crisis by a government minister, Hulot arrives at the ball dressed as a pirate. Martine is wearing a harlequin skirt and they dance together with various children looking in. Peeking through the window en route for another constitutional, the husband smiles approvingly before falling into step behind his spouse.

Next morning, the commandant leads an excursion to a picnic spot in the country. Standing in the front seat as though leading a military campaign, he beckons the other vehicles forward. The Amilcar needs towing, however, and Hulot is projected into the sea when he trips over the taut rope. Carrying on regardless, he helps Martine's aunt and the Englishwoman into the backseats and toddles off. Unfortunately, he breaks down and almost has his legs run over by a bus as he inspects the undercarriage. Using a jack, he succeeds only in raising the rear seats before the car slips off its jack into the grounds of a nearby estate, where a wheelchair-bound old stager mistakes the sound of the parping horn for a duck and opens fire.

Hulot, meanwhile, is chased away by two small dogs, one of which continues its pursuit to dusk. Taking refuge in a shack, Hulot lights a match and accidentally sets off a store of fireworks. Desperately trying to extinguish them, he runs round a revolving sprinkler with a watering can. Everyone wakes to see what's happening and the table tennis boy is delighted by the pandemonium. But Hulot has blotted his copybook and he is spurned by the other guests, as they make their farewells the next morning. Martine is cornered, so he sidles off to sit with some boys on the beach. The Englishwoman seeks him out to urge him to come again next year, while the strolling husband clasps him by the hand and slips him his address while confiding that it's been a pleasure to know him.

Depending on which version you see, the closing sequence shows Martine looking at holiday snaps on the train and smiling at the memory of Hulot, a shot of a coloured postage stamp, or a last seaview before the Amilcar splutteringly starts its journey home. Whatever the denouement, the temptation is strong to go right back to the beginning and start all over again.

Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea

Jacques Tati always claimed that the idea for Monsieur Hulot's Holiday came when he saw Émile Reynaud's hand-drawn Praxinoscope curio, Autour d'une Cabine (1894), which was shown in Paris in 1946 as part of the delayed celebration of cinema's first half century. But, while this ingenious animation includes scenes set against beach huts, Tati emphasised the connection in order to deflect comparisons with the silent slapstick of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

With his distinctive clothing and gait, Hulot was identified by some as a rejoinder to Chaplin, who had been known in France as 'Charlot'. While the Little Tramp consciously instigated incidents, however, Hulot often finds himself reacting to others and, when he does initiate a sequence, he rarely has any idea of the chaos his actions could cause. In this regard, he was similar to a hairdresser named Lalouette whom Tati had known in the army. He was a polite, unassuming chap who simply wanted to fit in. But he struggled to master the simplest tasks and his lack of awareness and look of unruffled bemusement made him a source of endless amusement to his comrades.

'What I wanted to present with the character of Hulot,' Tati later explained, 'was a man you can meet in the street, not a music hall character. He does not know that he is being funny.' This trait aligns him with Stan Laurel, whose attempts to fit in similarly saw him reduce order to disarray. The pair also share a blank expression of confused culpability and a habit of running away when they've blundered. The precision of Tati's sight gags, however, owes much to Keaton, as do the striped socks, which the Great Stone Face had worn in Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931), the French-language version of which had been supervised by Tati's erstwhile director, Claude Autant-Lara.

Unlike his Hollywood counterparts, Tati didn't feel the need to be the focus of every shot. Indeed, he often plays stooge to the comic business of others, which was generously shared around the cast, as this fitted in with Tati's philosophy of leaving the audience to notice jokes rather than foregrounding them. Moreover, he drew additional humour out of these situations by making Hulot too unobservant to notice what is happening around him.

Paid holidays were still a novelty for many, but Tati didn't invent the seaside movie, as Coney Island had hosted both Sam Wood's The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and Morris Engel's Little Fugitive (1953), while Carol Reed's Bank Holiday (1938) and Ken Annakin's Holiday Camp (1947) had shown working-class Brits rolling up their trousers for a paddle. The latter can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of The Huggetts Collection.

In seeking the perfect locale for his sophomore feature, Tati scoured the French and Belgian coastlines. However, while staying with friends in Port Charlotte in Brittany before the war, he had discovered the resort of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, which was situated between La Baule and Saint-Nazaire in the Departement of Loire-Atlantique. As well as being picturesque, its geography also suited the gags that Tati had concocted with Henri Marquet (with whom he had written Jour de fête), as well as painter friend Jacques Lagrange, who also helped out with the sets and props, and Pierre Aubert, the assistant director who would also play the socialist student.

Moreover, as parts of the Saint-Marc waterfront had been damaged during the war, Tati was able to erect sets in the derelict spaces. He also added a false façade to L'Hôtel de la Plage, which needed to keep its entrance free as it continued to trade during shooting. The house in which Martine lodges was also customised, while a skylight was fitted into the hotel roof for Hulot to peer out of. Much to the disappointment of the tourists who still flock to the site, however, there was never a room below it. The lounge and restaurant also fail to live up to expectations, as the ones seen in the film were recreated on a soundstage at the Boulogne-Billancourt Studios.

In keeping with the neo-realist tradition of casting non-professionals, Tati opted for mostly first-time actors, as he found them more authentic and easier to direct. Among those he persuaded to appear was Jacqueline Schillio, who played Martine using the pseudonym Nathalie Pascaud. As she was reluctant to be away from her husband, Tati cast Lille factory owner Jean-Pierre Zola as Schmutz and was so impressed with his performance that he used him again as his brother-in-law, Monsieur Arpel, in Mon oncle (1958). His wife, however, never acted again.

Martine's white-bearded relation was one of many locals coaxed before the camera, along the primary school teacher who played a boatman and the ice cream seller who simply stuck to his day job. The little boy who carries the cones was Daniel Marquet, who was the son of Henri Marquet who had been cast as the hotel guest in the striped shirt. Another newcomer was Lyon businessman Louis Perrault, who plays Hulot's companion at the cemetery, while music hall veteran Michèle Brabo came along to essay a holidaymaker. Established actors Lucien Frégis and Raymond Carl were hired to play the hotel proprietor and the waiter and it's safe to say they were both acquainted with the disapproving glowers of Laurel and Hardy's Scottish stalwart, James Finlayson, who died in October 1953 at the age of 65.

Tati started shooting with cinematographers Jacques Mercanton and Jean Mousselle in mid-July 1951. However, the protracted shoot meant that the unit had to return to Saint-Marc the following summer before completing the interior scenes in October 1952. One of the reasons for the delay was the weather's refusal to co-operate, with August being cold, wet, and overcast. Moreover, sand kept getting into the camera and scratching the celluloid, which necessitated numerous retakes. Tati also managed to burn himself while filming the fireworks sequence and had to wear a bandage on his nose.

Editing was entrusted (under vigilant supervision) to Suzanne Baron, Charles Bretoneiche, and Jacques Grassi, while Alain Romans was commissioned to write the music. While the film might not have had a plotline, it still had a structure, with the overriding rhythm being generated by the rolling sea and the passage of night and day. Although there are exceptions, exterior scenes are associated with sunlight, while interior sequences tend to take place under cover of darkness. Repetition played a key role in the daily routine, with Martine starting each morning by opening her window on to the beach view, while Schmutz forever beavers off to take a phone call, the long-married couple embark upon another of their walks, the student spouts his political rhetoric to disinterested listeners, and the meal bell clangs to bring guests back to the dining-room, with its kerthunking door.

In many ways, Tati sought to achieve a documentary effect by showing that holidays aren't all fun and frolics. Time often hangs heavy and there is sometimes little else to do but take a turn along the seafront or sit in the lobby and read, while the radio tries to remind the guests of the real world that they've temporarily left behind. The perambulating couple seem so bored that they are always the first to arrive for meals. No wonder the man is so grateful to Hulot for giving him a little vicarious pleasure. As the film proceeds, however, it's noticeable that the holidaymakers gradually stray further from the beach, whether it's to the tennis courts, the cemetery, the picnic spot, or the estate of the gun-toting blue blood.

Regardless of where the action takes place, Tati employs an identical camera technique. He retreats to the middle distance and points his static camera at the players, so that situations can play out in their own space and time and viewers can let their eyes survey the scene in search for the next deft and meticulously crafted gag. This technique discarded the classical screen grammar refined by D.W. Griffith and returned to the pioneering days of the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès. Indeed, the station scene recalls Arrivée d'un train en gare á la Ciotat, while the hosepipe joke harks back to L'Arroseur arrosé (both 1895), which Cinema Paradiso users can find on the BFI's essential anthology, Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers (1895-1910) . This was stealthily revolutionary film-making. Yet it would have a seismic impact on world cinema over the ensuing decade.

Tatily Every After

Opening in late February 1953, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot sold over five million tickets in France alone and recouped almost double its 120,000-franc budget on its initial run. In addition to winning the coveted Prix Luis Delluc, Tati also received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 28th Academy Awards after Hulot was eventually released in the United States in 1955. The English version, by the way, boasted voices by a young Christopher Lee, who did a lot of dubbing work early in his career.

Many prominent French critics recognised the unassuming audacity of the film, with Jean-Luc Godard picking up on its acutely comic serenity. 'This is what interests Tati,' he wrote. 'Everything and nothing. Blades of grass, a kite, children, a little old man, anything, everything which is at once real, bizarre, and charming.' Its reputation has grown ever since, although Tati was not entirely happy with the end result.

In 1959, he withdrew the picture from circulation and seemingly contemplated a remake before deciding to trim around 13 minutes of footage and replace the final shot with a colour image of a postmarked stamp. He also had Alain Romans replace his glorious piano score with a jazz variation that riffed on the song 'Quel temps fait-il à Paris?' This was released in 1962, only to vanish five years later when Tati lost control of his entire catalogue after bankruptcy.

The abridged version was re-released in 1977. However, Tati had been suitably impressed by Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) to devise a shark joke that involved the kayak's inner lining tearing as it folds in half to vaguely resemble sharp teeth. Returning to Saint-Marc, Tati dressed a crowd of extras in 1950s fashions and donned Hulot's soft hat in order to shoot the short snippet that became part of the 1978 cut that he came to consider definitive.

Although he was baffled by the scholarly attention lavished upon him after François Truffaut declared him an auteur in Cahiers du Cinéma, Tati anticipated the nouvelle vague with his employment of observational characters within the deep-focus mise-en-scène to remind audiences that they were watching conscious compositions not life caught on camera. His use of long takes that shared the gags among the characters also subverted convention, as did his tinkering with sound levels and synchronisation. Bowled over, Federico Fellini tried to convince Tati to play Don Quixote, but he turned his attention instead to a script entitled L'Illusioniste, only for it to languish in the files until Sylvain Chomet produced an animated version in 2010.

Such recognition failed to make it any easier to attract backing for future projects, however. A dispute over money with Fred Orain left Tati short of funds while making Mon oncle (1959) and, even though this won him an Academy Award and made him a small fortune, he blew it all on Playtime (1967), a recklessly ambitious satire on leisure and modernity that was filmed on a purpose-built set nicknamed Tativille. The decision to relegate Hulot to the ensemble frustrated fans and critics alike, who lacked the patience to seek out the gags with which Tati studded the 70mm frame.

They were no more enamoured of Trafic (1971), by which time Tati had few allies after alienating such devoted disciples as French clown Pierre Etaix and Dutch documentarist Bert Haanstra. Consequently, he only completed Parade with the aid of Swedish television. His short, Forza Bastia (1978) about the Corsican football team's run to the UEFA Cup Final against PSV Eindhoven was finally released after Sophie edited the largely forgotten footage.

Tati was a genius, but he refused to compromise and his unique brand of abstract realism left mainstream audiences behind. He died at the age of 75 in 1982 before he could embark upon a sequel to Playtime entitled Confusion. No one has recaptured the innocent joy of silent slapstick as well and there is no question that Tati was a cinematic visionary. But, as with Chaplin, the gap between the man and the delightful character he portrayed on screen was sometimes disarmingly wide.

Tati remains beloved in Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, however, where a statue of Hulot lurching forwards and gazing out to sea was erected in 1999. It's still standing, although the end of his pipe was snapped off by a souvenir hunter. Surely it wouldn't take too much to effect a repair?