Comedy Set Pieces

Film: Mon Oncle (My Uncle); It’s a Gift
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen (Mon Oncle); DVD from NetFlix on big ol’ television (It’s a Gift).

I understand that there are many people who do not appreciate the particular comic style of Jacques Tati. I understand this even though I am not of that opinion. Tati’s work was groundbreaking in its own way, a unique blend of pantomime, timing, sight gags, and auditory humor. While most people in the States (and I imagine around the world with the possible exception of France) are unfamiliar with him, his influence is pretty wide-ranging. Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean is a direct descendant, for instance (and for good or ill, depending on your point of view), as is much of what was done by Monty Python.

Mon Oncle (My Uncle) is the second of Tati’s films concerning the life and struggles of Monsieur Hulot (an uncredited Tati), a bumbling, but well-meaning man of no means existing in his own little world in the middle of Paris. Hulot is a makeup-less clown, a fool, and a man who never met a person, place or situation he couldn’t further destroy or screw up. In this film, Tati pits him against the perils of modern (at least for the late ‘50s) and mechanized living.

Hulot is, at least in terms of character, set against his sister (Adrienne Servantie) and her husband (Jean-Pierre Zola), the Arpels. They live in an ultra-modern house filled with every possible mechanized contraption imaginable. The house itself is virtually empty and is more of a show piece than an actual place to live. Their furniture, for instance, is completely modern—it’s sleek and attractive—but it’s also uncomfortable and virtually unusable. Every possible task has a push button—Madame Arpel, for instance, pushes a button to flip a steak on the stove, and must rush to another button to open the door when someone arrives. Their garden is similarly modern, set out in geometric shapes that contain either low hedges or identically colored patches of rock. The centerpiece is a fountain of dyed-blue water that spouts from the mouth of a fish. At least it spouts when someone arrives who Madame Arpel wishes to impress.

The Arpels have a son named Gerard (Alain Becourt), who is bored in his own house and truly comes alive only when Uncle Hulot is around. Gerard gets into minor trouble outside of the home, but inside, is incapable of expressing anything more than boredom because of the sterility of his environment and the consumer- and convenience-minded thinking of his parents. The plot, such as it is, concerns finding Hulot a job with his brother-in-law’s company and/or finding him a wife in the person of the Arpels’ next-door neighbor (Dominique Marie). And, as is the case with Tati’s character in all situations, insanity, madness, and chaos are the result of his very presence.

Mon Oncle strikes me as a natural follow-up to Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. Tati is recognizable as the same character despite a slight change in outfit—while the pipe is still ever-present, he always wears a tan overcoat. Throughout the film, Hulot is blamed for things he did not do and gets away with many things that he did, suffering a sort of karmic justice for his bumbling errors in other places.

For all of its mania, Mon Oncle moves quite slowly. There really is not much of a plot here, and Hulot and the neighbor do not meet until well into the film. Indeed, while the film is unquestionably a comedy, there is little here that is laugh-out-loud funny. But that’s not really the intent of the film, or the intent of what Tati did. Instead, we are given a series of set pieces that indicate the absurdity of everything going on in the world of the film, and thus the world at large. Tati’s Hulot is a ridiculous character, a buffoon, but he is no more ridiculous than the rest of the characters on the screen with their dreams of a perfect modern life and pretentions of having and being more than they do and are.

So, because it is what it is, I understand when people tell me that they are turned off by Tati’s work or that they don’t find it funny. In many ways, it’s not intended to be that. It can be difficult to follow as well, since most of the dialogue is merely a murmur and what we see and the sound effects are far more important than the words being spoken. Tati worked with both sight gags and sound gags. The humor comes not from the situations per se, but from the implications of what is happening. Given a drink holder that is to be plunged into the ground, for instance, Hulot manages to stab the main water line of the fountain, and is thus relegated to keeping his foot on the new hole. When showing off her kitchen to her guests, Madame Arpel is forced to shout over the sounds of her machinery. Sure, there’s convenience and even a stark, modern beauty in the house. But at what cost? And that’s more or less the point.

It’s satire and subtle commentary on the world through an absurd lens. While individual scenes are not riotous or even memorable, what is is the overall production itself. Mon Oncle is much greater than the sum of its parts and scenes—it works to combine all of its elements into a greater picture and impression. In many ways, while we are smiling at the antics of Hulot and the Arpels, Jacques Tati is looking through the screen and laughing at us.

W.C. Fields was a very different comedian from Tati, in that his work was rarely silent. Additionally, he didn’t always cause the chaos around him, but suffered from other people creating that chaos. However, the results of his comedy are remarkably similar to that of Tati in many ways. While the two approached the nature of comedy from very different directions, their films work almost exactly the same way.

It’s a Gift, generally considered a high point in Fields’s career, is remarkably similar in tone to Tati’s work in that there is sort of a through line of a plot, but the plot is really secondary to everything else that is going on. This film, like many others in his career, is merely an excuse for Fields to do his routine in front of a movie audience rather than on stage. The point is not to see what happens by the end of the film, but to see what happens to Fields moment by moment and how he reacts to it.

As with many comedies, the story is ridiculously simple. Harold Bissonette (Fields) runs a small general store, has a self-centered daughter (Jean Rouverol), a noisy and annoying son (Tom Bupp), and a shrill harpy of a wife (Kathleen Howard). In other words, except for his occupation, he’s every W.C. Fields character ever. His one dream in life is to own an orange grove in California, and when his Uncle Bean dies, he gets his chance. Over the objections of his wife and daughter, Bissonette (pronounced bis-o-NAY by his social climbing wife) packs up the family and moves to the new property only to discover that it is worthless for growing oranges. However, there are developers very interested in purchasing his new property, allowing for the requisite happy ending of an early comedy.

But again, the plot really isn’t that important. While everything is essentially loosely connected to this story, the family doesn’t get in the car to move until there are about 20 minutes left, and doesn’t get to California and the bum orange grove until nearly the very end. Why? Because it’s not really about that. It’s about seeing Fields traumatized by his neighbors. The middle sequence of the film consists of Fields attempting to get a little sleep on his porch and being disturbed by a series of accidents, neighbors, passers-by, and other minor calamities. This sequences goes on for a very long time, making a substantial portion of the film, and has nothing to do with the family heading out west. It’s there so that Fields can be Fields.

The Fields persona is in full force in this film. He keeps up a nearly constant patter of dialogue, some of it remarkably funny, even now close to 80 years after the fact. His grumblings touch on everything and are liberally sprinkled with anger toward everything around him and constant apologies and explanations to his shrew of a wife. As with Tati, the film moves from set piece to set piece—the shaving sequence, the blind man in the store, the car that won’t run—and weaves back and forth around the plot without really worrying whether or not the story is advanced.

It’s a Gift is essentially pointless, but it’s also funny. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that, honestly.

Why to watch Mon Oncle: There’s a unique, absurd charm to the work of Tati.
Why not to watch: It doesn’t go anywhere.

Why to watch It’s a Gift: W.C. Fields was a unique performer.
Why not to watch: It’s silly, short, and overacted by everyone not named W.C. Fields.

Redefining the Screwball Comedy

Film: Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (M. Hulot’s Holiday)
Format: DVD from Mokena Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.



















In any artistic endeavor, there are those people who, for whatever reason, have a small output of material—not good material, but material in general. Stanley Kubrick, for instance, directed fewer than a dozen and a half movies, although close to a dozen of them are bona fide classics. Tarkovsky directed only 11. They’re sort of like the cinematic equivalent of George Orwell, who wrote only six novels, but within those six novels, penned Animal Farm and 1984.

Jacques Tati is like that. One of the greatest French directors in history (and that’s saying a lot) and certainly one of the greatest comedy directors of all time, Tati directed a mere nine films, including his incomplete final film. And yet, virtually every one of his films is a clinic on how to do comedy. In almost all of his films, Tati not only directs, but stars as the eccentric Monsieur Hulot, and never better than in Les Vacanses de Monsieur Hulot.

Hulot is a good natured and well-meaning man, but he is also a blundering lummox and a boob. With his pants pulled up to well above his navel, odd gait, and omnipresent pipe and hat, Hulot is unmistakable in any scene even if he is not the focus of that scene. Hulot always means well, but is incapable of doing anything without causing tremendous chaos around himself.

In this film, widely considered the greatest of the Hulot comedies, M. Hulot goes on a vacation to a seaside resort. Here he tries to fit in with the regular summer visitors, but is unable to either by his own complete lack of awareness for his own surroundings or freak chance events. That’s really all there is to it. Essentially the film is a series of comic events, situations, and people, a mostly plotless little film with a great repeating guitar and vibraphone soundtrack.

Tati’s film style is unlike anything else of its time, and unlike almost everything that came afterwards, although much of what Rowan Atkinson did with Mr. Bean appears to come as a direct answer to Tati’s character. Bean is, in many ways, a British answer to the French Hulot. Tati’s style relies on a few particular oddities virtually unique to him. Conversations are almost entirely muted and difficult to hear, and in many cases aren’t that important. Because of this, many of the comedic gags are played in mime, or virtual mime. On the other hand, sound effects, particularly those that are essential to the various slapstick gags that occur throughout the film.

Tati is a brilliant physical actor. His various escapades as Hulot are consistently funny, often in very subtle ways. While there are certainly some laugh-out-loud bits in this film, much of what happens or odd coincidences or silly happenings that would be passed over in any other film. Here, such minor comedic happenings are given as much scope as many of Tati’s grander jokes. Many of these jokes are little setpieces that have nothing to do with anything else in the film, but are charming enough that their remaining in the film is something of a testament to Tati’s ability to choose scenes wisely and well.

Hulot attempting to mount a horse is one perfect example of his skill behind the camera. In a typical comedy, we’d see a series of pratfalls of Hulot attempting to get on the horse and falling off—funny, but typical. Instead, we see the entire scene from a different point of view, only getting Hulot thrown into the frame now and again, leaving us to imagine what is going on behind the corner of the building.

In addition to being adroit with his camera, Tati is also very clever with how he constructs his narrative. Often the Hulot character is nowhere near the main action that is going on, but is standing in the background, doing something else, completely oblivious to everything else, but still creating chaos around him. By focusing the camera somewhere other than on himself, though, Tati is able to show odd little moments that are staggering. A woman picking up seashells and handing them to a companion, for instance, doesn’t notice him simply tossing the shells away while she isn’t looking. These little asides add to the overall appeal of this film, making what would otherwise be an entertaining film something far more special.

Jacques Tati was something truly special both on camera and behind the camera. It makes me wonder how much more he could have done if only he had managed to make more than his small handful of films. With Tati, though, you take what you can get, and Les Vacanses de Monsieur Hulot is worth at least two of almost any other comedy film ever made.

Why to watch Les Vacanses de Monsieur Hulot: A unique, light, and still funny comedy.
Why not to watch: That vibraphone song will get lodged in your melon for days.