Back in 1952, the great French filmmaker Jacques Tati introduced to the world Monsieur Hulot with his near silent and funny observation of French people on holiday (Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday). That film was gentle in its observation of French society, lovingly showing their quirks and foibles in a film where nothing happens except showing normal people acting silly while on vacation.
The next we find Monsieur Hulot (lovingly played by Tati himself), it is six years later and in bright technicolor. “My uncle”, is that film and Monsieur Hulot is that uncle. He lives in an exaggerated version of a typical Parisian building and is the Uncle of his sister’s son, who is married to a rich industrialist whom all live in an over-exaggerated building of monstrous modernity.
This home is the star of the movie and is made out of perfect geometric shapes. The house comes off like something out of a future Monty Python movie. It is almost animated in its look and feel, full of automatic gates, doors, windows and kitchen appliances with a but-ugly aluminum fountain greeting all who enter its cold front gate. The house has two perfectly placed circular windows at its front and when Hulot’s sister and her husband are in the house each looks out from one of the windows, which gives them the look of being the pupils of the window eyes to the house. All of a sudden this fantastical and hilarious house becomes a living thing making fun of all the people wondering in its shadows.
The couple have a 9 or 10 year old son named Gerard who once entering his home has to abide by countless rules from where to walk to how to play. Outside of the house, Gerard hooks up with his prankster friends who enjoy creating havoc with the adult world.
Hulot’s world at first glance represents the old Parisian world but is in itself a self parody of exaggeration while at the same time being the opposite pole of his sisters villa from hell. He lives in what at first glance looks like an old Parisian town house made out of two separate dwellings, but this is Tati and nothing is what it seems. Hulut enters one side of the building and as we follow him through windows and doorways we are shown the building as being one structure instead of two, with Hulut’s apartment ending on the same side he entered, but on top, and after having to walk throughout each side of the building in order to arrive.
Hulut’s brother in law tries to get him a job at his plastic factory where they make plastic pipes. At the factory Hulut suffers from the craziness of modernity once again and his accidental creation of sausage-like plastic pipes is one of the many funny highlights of the film.
His sister tries to hook him up with one of her commercialized exaggerated and single neighbors which is of course an excuse to set up the hilarious chair party scene.
As in all of Tati’s films, there is very little dialogue in “My Uncle”, placing almost all of the emphasis on the visual and sound effects thrown out throughout the film. The world of, “My Uncle”, is extremely intricate with many various elements happening at the same time. The humor is a quiet and subtle type of humor as we identify with the quiet and likable Hulut while he uncovers and discovers the complete absurdities of his world.
The movie is also chock full of secondary characters that are there only to add texture an depth to this crazy world. We have a street sweeper who can never quite finish sweeping a large pile of dirt on the street because he is always talking or arguing with someone, a fruit seller who’s scale is tipped wrong because of a flat tire and a young girl who lives in Hulut’s building, treating him like a play friend in the beginning and who suddenly seems more mature and grown by the films end creating a slight hint of possible romance.
The dialogue is mostly non existent, which is not saying that the film is akin to the great silent comedies because Tati makes great use of sound. All the automated atrocities in the modern house work with intense noise that maximizes their feel of interference. A bird sings to the movement of light caused by Hulut;s positioning of his window blind and this song creates music to the old neighborhood. One of the major pranks done by Gerard’s friends is a whistle of distraction that causes people to walk onto a pole. The soundtrack is extremely circus-like and fits perfectly with the clown-like characters that permeate throughout the movie.
This is an intricate, socially conscience movie with something to say about Post War France that is also very very funny. It is one of cinema’s comedic works of genius.
1001 Movies before you die 