Mon Oncle (1956)
Country: FR
Technical: col 116m
Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servatie
Synopsis:
An industrialist living out an antiseptic existence in an ultra-modern house finally learns to have mischievous fun with his young son, thanks to his eccentric brother-in-law.
Review:
Tati's first colour film is a considerable step forward in ambition and sophistication of effect, not all of which comes off! If Monsieur Hulot's Holiday was his response to Chaplin's The Cure and countless other silent shorts, this is his Modern Times. The film is at once a gilded vision of la vieille France we all remember from films, and perhaps glimpse still on visits if we are lucky, and an extraordinarily prescient parody of the world we live in now, from plastic domestic ware to remote control gadgetry. In the middle, you can also see the post-war high rise apartments and the 'terrains vagues' awaiting development, all of it rendered in exquisite colour. In short, Hulot is a dinosaur, a relic of a vanishing past who manages to sow chaos through his well-meaning attempts to engage with the present. Dialogue is almost entirely superfluous here, while it has to be said that the point of some of the protracted sequences during which the camera stands back and watches can be hard to fathom. All things considered, however, the film leaves an indelible mark and remains a masterpiece whose formal qualities outweigh its signal lack of narrative drive.
Country: FR
Technical: col 116m
Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servatie
Synopsis:
An industrialist living out an antiseptic existence in an ultra-modern house finally learns to have mischievous fun with his young son, thanks to his eccentric brother-in-law.
Review:
Tati's first colour film is a considerable step forward in ambition and sophistication of effect, not all of which comes off! If Monsieur Hulot's Holiday was his response to Chaplin's The Cure and countless other silent shorts, this is his Modern Times. The film is at once a gilded vision of la vieille France we all remember from films, and perhaps glimpse still on visits if we are lucky, and an extraordinarily prescient parody of the world we live in now, from plastic domestic ware to remote control gadgetry. In the middle, you can also see the post-war high rise apartments and the 'terrains vagues' awaiting development, all of it rendered in exquisite colour. In short, Hulot is a dinosaur, a relic of a vanishing past who manages to sow chaos through his well-meaning attempts to engage with the present. Dialogue is almost entirely superfluous here, while it has to be said that the point of some of the protracted sequences during which the camera stands back and watches can be hard to fathom. All things considered, however, the film leaves an indelible mark and remains a masterpiece whose formal qualities outweigh its signal lack of narrative drive.
Country: FR
Technical: col 116m
Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servatie
Synopsis:
An industrialist living out an antiseptic existence in an ultra-modern house finally learns to have mischievous fun with his young son, thanks to his eccentric brother-in-law.
Review:
Tati's first colour film is a considerable step forward in ambition and sophistication of effect, not all of which comes off! If Monsieur Hulot's Holiday was his response to Chaplin's The Cure and countless other silent shorts, this is his Modern Times. The film is at once a gilded vision of la vieille France we all remember from films, and perhaps glimpse still on visits if we are lucky, and an extraordinarily prescient parody of the world we live in now, from plastic domestic ware to remote control gadgetry. In the middle, you can also see the post-war high rise apartments and the 'terrains vagues' awaiting development, all of it rendered in exquisite colour. In short, Hulot is a dinosaur, a relic of a vanishing past who manages to sow chaos through his well-meaning attempts to engage with the present. Dialogue is almost entirely superfluous here, while it has to be said that the point of some of the protracted sequences during which the camera stands back and watches can be hard to fathom. All things considered, however, the film leaves an indelible mark and remains a masterpiece whose formal qualities outweigh its signal lack of narrative drive.