Mon Oncle - Criterion Collection (1958)

The best of Jacques Tati: M. Hulot franchise

Expertise a must***
Art House and International Cinema are different than mainstream films.
Regarding Jacques Tatischeff a.k.a. Jacques Tati (1907-1982) was one of the best writers and directors of French Cinema. He played with the absurd, minimalistic language, great acting and directing. Mon Oncle (My Uncle) was released in 1958. Its a comedy in a Futuristic and industrial world, mechanical and minimalistic, mid-century modern and art deco.Remember the GM buses Tour of the future, and Disneyland's House of the future.
Reviews to be useful need to be sincere to have a brief description or synopsis, written clear and concise, and include arguments pros and cons. But most importantly the writer, reviewer or critic most comprehend the subject, it is not about likes or dislikes, it is about a composition, the theme, the subject matter, and transport him or herself to the right period. October 12, 2008

Mon Oncle

If you sign up to this genre, it's perfect. Gently amusing and charming. Commenting cleverly on the arrogance of modernity over the more traditional lifestyle. March 18, 2008

Tati: at your birthday's party!

My uncle was for the cinema what "A brave new world" for literature but told with an ever smiling face. Once more Jacques Tati returns with his acidic and pleasant confrontation between the common man and the increasingly depersonalized and mechanized society, always in a hurry without the demanded time to enjoy the minor simplicities and overlooked things the live gives is.

That's why this film awarded with all the honors the coveted Prize of Best Foreign Film in 1958.
November 28, 2007

THIS IS EB BEST OF THE HULOT SERIES

I LOVED MR HUOT'S VACATION, BUT ONE ONCLE TO ME IS THE FUNNIEST OF THE HOT SERIES. I LOVED THE PRETENTIOUSNESS OF THE BOURGEOISIE, AND THE PANNING OR THE PLASTIC HOUS AND THE REAL LIVING QUARTERS ON THE FRENCH. ALSO,HOW THE LITTLE DOG AND MON. HULOT'S NEWPHEW ACCEPTED THE REAL WORLD, AND NOT THE PLATIC ONE CREATED BY HIS FATHER.
THIS A MUST SEE!!!!! August 23, 2007

"Better" is no good if a child doesn't go with it

In the aftermath of WWII, most western world faced similar problems. Large scale urban planning and large scale industrial projects seemed common answers. It's Tati's intuition, transposed in this 1959 film, that captured how fit these answers have become. Now, with all the social unrest and physical decay in socially engineered urban centers, we can see that those answers were temporary fixes at best. At a different level, it shows the limitations of rational approaches to social re-engineering.

The elements of this film can almost be divided neatly in any pair of the following categories: Old and New; Chaos, Order; Emotional, Rational; Organic, Synthetic; Myriad of unwritten rules, Clear and specified rules; and on and on. Common between any two opposing categories are a social misfit, a child, and a dog. Socially, they belong to parallel categories, yet they enter each other's realm by literally passing through a broken brick-wall. The misfit is Mr. Hulot, who belongs to the old world--played here by the director himslef, Jacques Tati. The child is Mr. Hulot's nephew, who lives with his well-off parents and the dog in a house/society of the future, as imagined by the forward-thinking minds of the moment. Nobody seems well adjusted to the synthetic world yet it is only the child who shows it without restraint. At least Mr. Hulot is the typical misfit, no matter what world he lives in. This remains so, despite the serial mishap befallen unto the inhabitants of the new world, until the end of the film when, led by a string of events, the father of the child is re-humanized by a prank; ...the same type of prank his son was enjoying in the dis-orderly world of Mr. Hulot.

In the end, we can try to do it all in the name of some progress or another, but if a child (or a dog) doesn't go with it, we have a warning sign. And, at times, an artist comes along and, through artistic production and intuition, is able to look further ahead than most. In 1959, that artist was the director and actor Jacques Tati. July 22, 2007

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