Our Movie of the Day series is back this week for a final batch of summer travels, as August is rapidly winding down and fall approaches. But before that happens it's time to spend one last week with people on summer vacation, which means, traveling in the summer in a place that is not their home. That might be a weirdly specific theme, but I think it's appropriate for these final days when it's the last chance for any kind of vacation. The choice today is the French film Mr. Hulot's Holiday (the American title), in which Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati, who also directed) goes to the beach and causes relatively harmless havoc to the vacationers around him. This movie was made almost entirely without dialogue, so the fact that it's French is really incidental- Tati was kind of a throwback to the silent comedians and his style of humor replicated some of them, while also being entirely his own (his emotionless style probably mimics Buster Keaton most). This will probably be kind of an oddity to some people, but it grows on you as you watch it- the subtle, not overt slapstick isn't really Chaplin-esque, but Mr. Hulot's distinct, somewhat charmless charm becomes its own unique persona as the film goes along. It's worth checking out.
Original Trailer:
