Jacques Tati
is frequently mentioned as a comic pioneer, and occasionally as a comic genius.
His body of work is relatively small, but has influenced some very well-known
comic figures (Terry Jones has recorded enthusiastic DVD introductions for some
of Tati’s films, and Rowan Atkinson has acknowledged the significant debt Mr.
Bean owes to M. Hulot, Tati’s most famous creation).
I recently
saw Les Vacances du M. Hulot, Tati’s
second feature and the only non-English-language film in Time Out’s list of the best 100 comedy films.[i]
It was a curious experience – I saw it in a cinema where the audience were
mostly silent throughout, and yet I didn’t get the impression that people were
put out by the film’s failure to coax many laughs. In part this may be because
some of the appeal of the film is less about comedy than about something harder
to pin down: nostalgia, simplicity, or an acceptance of the vagaries of life
and the idiosyncrasies of other people.[ii]
Or the
audience may have primarily come to admire the film’s technical
accomplishments.[iii] Tati
has a superb eye for constructing a scene that develops (or falls apart) to
reveal one telling detail. To take one example, the sequence featuring tourists
boarding an overcrowded bus (starting at 1.10 here)
culminates in a spare child
popping up in the steering wheel, the kind of droll grace note of which Tati is
so fond. This meticulous construction of a scene around a single visual detail has
been taken up a number of subsequent directors, for instance Jean-Pierre
Jeunet, who has used it in films ranging from the rather saccharine (Amélie) to the inventively dark (Delicatessen).[iv]
That said,
these kinds of details are charming or at most somewhat amusing, rather than
being actually funny. More generally, the film sharply illustrates some of the
limitations of the kind of comedy Tati was working with, which might be characterised
as gentle slapstick.
The first
limitation is that too many of the jokes rely on people behaving extremely
stupidly. It is true that a great deal of narrative comedy relies on people
making mistakes of one sort or another, but this need not be an issue for the
audience (for instance, it may be plausible that from the character’s point of
view, what they are doing makes sense). In M.
Hulot there is no attempt to explain this behaviour or put it into some
sort of context where it can be understood – it is crushingly obvious, and the
film is cheapened by including so many set-pieces which rely on it. Other
characters are endlessly prone to being distracted by Hulot and spilling their
drinks, or mistaking what is plainly a canoe for (presumably) a sea monster
(from 0.28 here)
or proving to be the among most inept tennis players the world has ever seen:
or proving to be the among most inept tennis players the world has ever seen:
A different
film could probably get away with scenes like these – a film which was set a
few degrees further removed from reality, or one with a wilder feel or looser
logic. As a general rule of thumb, the more antic a film, the more stupid
behaviour can be funny in it. To complain about an entire marching band walking
into a wall
or a fleet
of police cars finding new and inventive ways to enter a pileup
would be to
miss the point – and the tone – of Animal
House or The Blues Brothers. But
in M. Hulot, such behaviour feels
forced – it jars with the gentle observations of much of the film.
The second
drawback of this kind of humour is its rigidity. Again, a great deal of humour
relies on fairly rigid conventions and rules, but again this can be moderated
or at least disguised, for example by varying the subject-matter or tone of
different scenes, or even by subtleties of phrasing and expression. In M. Hulot, the scenes are set up and
dispatched practically by clockwork, in a way which quickly becomes irritating:
things are always arranged so that Hulot inadvertently upsets the other
characters, or they inadvertently upset each other. This means that a sense of
the unexpected, so crucial to genuine comic creativity, is missing. The film
reminded me of a stand-up relying too heavily on puns – some might be genuinely
funny, but if everything is a pun then not only do they tend to become
predictable, but the element of contrivance becomes obvious and gets in the way
of enjoying the comedy.
[i]
Although it is, to all intents and purposes, a silent film. Nevertheless, it’s
the only representative on that list from the non-Anglophone world.
[iii]
About which Ebert is again spot on.
[iv]
Co-directed by Marc Caro.
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