Mr. Hulot is a great comic character, yes, but I don't think he appears in great movies. Thinking about the film's I've seen him in, this one and My Uncle, I think I know the problem. Tati is making what are essentially silent films. There is little dialogue of any significance in either, and certainly nothing that could not be conveyed with an intertitle. That was fine for Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, but I want to here Mr. Hulot talk. I want to know how stays so nice and innocent in a world where everyone else, well, isn't. I want to know what he does for a living, how he can afford to take these ritzy vacations. I want to see him reassure others who seem to have got their souls sucked out by the modern world.
But of course I am looking at the film for what I want it to be instead of what it is. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is a very simple film- Mr. Hulot takes a vacation on the French Riviera and gets into a variety of amusing comic situation. Many of these are moderately funny, and there is one big laugh- a Keatonian moment when he accidently splits his boat in half and causes people to think it's a shark (maybe you had to be there). But the movie its self is a little too laid back and after while it becomes to difficult to focus on it. It's also far too long, even at just 86 minuets, it wears out its welcome. This might have worked as a short, but there's just not enough there to sustain it as a feature.
And who is Mr. Hulot, anyway? After seeing the character star feature in two films I find myself wondering about that more than ever. Strange, how I don't wonder about the Little Tramp's childhood, but I want to know the whole life story of Tati's creation, perhaps because he seems to be from another time than everyone else.
Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953)