Jacques Tati directed the movie Mon Oncle (My Uncle) which was released in 1958 in French. Tati plays the protagonist, Monsieur Hulot, an eccentric man whose sister, Madame Arpel (Adrienne Servantie), is married to industrialist Charles Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola). Hulot is the uncle in the title to the Arpel’s son Gérard (Alain Bécourt). The overarching plot is simple: Charles is supposed to find his brother-in-law a respectable job that can keep him busy and out of trouble. A lot of silliness occurs in pursuit of that goal.
While I was watching the film, I was mindful of the theme that modernity is providing waves of technology for a modern homemaker to be proud of. That is a subtext of the reality that the Arpel’s move through. Their house is strikingly spartan. It has minimal furniture with no decorations nor signs of personality beyond its touches of automation. Outside, the garden is stark with only tiny patches of lawn and concrete stepping stones amidst gravel patches. The stones form paths from the outer gate to the house and small places to entertain guests.
The one embellishment of the yard is a ridiculous fish fountain. When a visitor presses the buzzer to request entry, Madame Arpel turns a knob to release a stream of water from the fish’s mouth. Next, she pushes a button to unlock the outer door. There is something peculiar about the fountain because it is never the same height and when it is turned off, the water hesitates to stop. Once the guest leaves, the fountain is turned off right away. Later, it’s the origin of a lot of silliness when it’s damaged by Mr. Hulot’s ever-present umbrella.
Newly invented technology is a theme in the “modern” world that the Arpel’s belong to. At his work, the phones are treated as fancy novelties. Mr. Arpel’s boss, Monsieur Pichard (Lucien Frégis) has his importance indicated by having two doors in his office that he can direct staff and visitors to choose. The factory makes kilometers of rubber hoses with a complicated machine that Hulot manages to crash. At home, the Arpel’s kitchen is controlled by a few mysterious buttons. Monsieur Hulot tries to open one of the cabinets and can’t find the correct (unlabeled) button in the console to get a snack. Suddenly, a cabinet to open and reveals a pitcher. Hulot accidentally discovers that the pitcher bounces satisfyingly. The glass that was in the same shelf didn’t bounce as well. A recurring theme is that the button is an essential feature of modernity. They can be found all through the house.
Mr. Hulot’s world is quite different. It’s a world of interesting people, their games and everyday amusements. Nothing is new and the market is full of (expensive) food options. His apartment is on the top floor of a three-story building. To get there, he follows a maze-like path to the roof. The windows in the house let the viewer see the stairs and corridors he passes on his trip. The first time he makes the trip, his slow, seeming random, progress is intriguing. Hulot introduces Gérard to this traditional world as he brings him home from school. Gérard has friends who are fond of pranks. For one trick, when cars are returning from dropping the kids off at school, the kids make a noise as if a stopped car was hit from behind, causing the consternation of the driver. Another game is to distract people walking so that they run into a lamp post.
The filmographer Thomas Flight has a recent video In Praise of Comfort Films which reported that Mon Oncle has the most cute dogs in a movie. The dogs are running the neighborhood and looking for whatever dogs look for. According to IMDB, the dogs came from a local pound. It reports that Tati found adoptive homes for the dogs after the movie was finished, promoting them as movie stars. The Arpels are wealthy and their home contrasts with the background images of generic, industrialized apartment buildings.
Although the movie is subtitled in English, the first few minutes of the film don’t have any dialog, just music and the activity of the everyday world that Hulot belongs to. The film was pretty funny with lots of LOL moments. The transition from traditional life to the technological world of modern cars and Arpel’s factory is full of dissonances. It seems that every opportunity for Hulot to fit into the future was a complete failure, but it didn’t affect Hulot’s playfulness and humor. A final show of opulence is the Arpel’s new pink and purple Cadillac, offering a ride into the future for Hulot.
Mon Oncle is really funny. It won a 1959 Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. The version that I saw was the French Language version with English Subtitles and not the dubbed English version. The disk was released by Criterion and also included a humorous short “L’ecole des facteurs” (The Postman’s School) that has Tati as a newly trained bicycle postman. Tati made several movies with Monsieur Hulot of which Mon Oncle is the most successful.
I was surprised that my search for the movie in the statewide library consortium, Evergreen, only found two copies of the film. I was really glad that one of them was in my local library. The library has a section of “Binge Boxes” which provide a wide selection of themed collections to binge watch with the whole crew. Mon Oncle was in the “Criterion 3” binge box.
W. Smith 