After watching a Tati short at La Fête du Court I wanted to (re)watch Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953).

The film is a slapstick comedy about a man's vacation to a seaside resort in France. It does look its age (70 years old!), surely, but there's still a refreshingly excessive element to Tati's childish jokes and seemingly-just-out-of-the-silent-era acting+filmmaking1. There's practically no dialog, mostly sounds, what seems like a single 10-second tune in the soundtrack, acting is over-the-top (Tati is a mime). Watch for its unique comedy and for the film's significance in cinema history.

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot streams on the Internet Archive (with English subtitles for the few background-noise French words).

Footnotes

  1. Tati is Hulot, which is impressive in its own right.