Art house: Jacques Tati strikes comedy gold in Mr Hulot’s Holiday

There is a timelessness about Mr Hulot’s 1953 seaside escapades that makes it hard to believe the Frenchman’s adventures are already 60 years old. The first of four celluloid outings by Monsieur Hulot saw director-writer-star Jacques Tati creating a personage that rivalled Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp in his ability to make comedic gold out of simple situations.

Not since Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) had silent picture techniques been so cleverly adapted for the talking screen. The emphasis was on the visual, making the most of Mr Hulot’s gangly awkwardness and embodiment of such trademarks as his long pipe and floppy hat.

Despite its surprise Oscar nomination for best script, a rarity among foreign language films, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday is less a sustained narrative than a collection of vignettes.

We never learn much about the title character, an eccentric but not too peculiar loner who paradoxically enjoys the constant company of strangers – nor are we made privy to an iota of information as to his pre- or post-holiday existence. Instead, the focus is exclusively on Hulot’s summer break, which is presented as a series of brief escapades like the one-reel shorts that were a cinematic staple before the rise of television in the 1950s.

Tati’s inventiveness is delightfully evident throughout – from an offbeat shark attack and cemetery sojourn to the more ostensibly mundane environs of a hotel dining room.

Hulot’s mastery of props and sense of timing are, for lack of a better comparison, Chaplinesque. Never has a naïf got in and out of so many potentially injurious situations without an inkling of awareness that his life was in peril.