Jacques Tati is probably the most famous French comic of all time. Monsieur Hulot is one of those well-loved outsiders, rebels by default rather than vocation and melancholy clowns pitted against the conventions of bourgeois society and the false promises of progress.
The latest in the BFI’s very thorough re-releases of Tati’s major works include Mon oncle (1958) (the second Hulot which followed his celebrated holiday adventures), an eccentric's critique of modernist excess, and the earlier Jour de fête (1949), in which he plays François, the bicycle-riding postman, persuaded by his fellow-villagers to jazz up his deliveries to American standards. Both releases include alternative versions of the original films, along with some of Tati’s excellent and less well-known shorts.
The two films feature a hero out of joint with his times. Curiously, Mon oncle, with a cacophony of buzzers and other technological sounds, a capricious electric fountain and a dangerous robot-driven kitchen, has a dated feel which the older film, set in a sleepy traditional village, avoids. Jour de fête is the better movie, flawlessly constructed and paced, with a cast of characters - from the goat-driving crone playing the role of Greek chorus to the visiting funfair’s Lothario - who deliver familiar tropes, while managing to express with great lightness an authentic humanity. As in his other films, Tati's progress is threatened at every turn by children and animals.
Tati’s postman, a heart-winning combination of trickster and fool, is in may ways more interesting than pipe-smoking Hulot. As Chaplin did before him, Tati fell into routines, often humorous enough but lacking the total surprise of improvisation. Mon oncle has an over-worked feel to it, as if the gags and the visual style had become standbys. The film is a period piece – a witness to the dubious triumph of mod cons as well as a cousin of absurdist drama. This makes it more interesting than funny, while the older film, with a perennial freshness and charm, works wonders, transcending the boundaries of style history.
