's French cinema has a bit of comedic genius, and it's just a cliché to point out. At least thirty years. Because it should be pointed out that the school of burlesque comedy originated in France at the beginning of this century, Max Linder became its representative, and Mack Sennett moved the performance program of this school to Hollywood. In Hollywood, comedy blossomed especially brightly, producing actors like Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, and especially Charlie Chaplin. And as we all know, Chaplin respected Max Linder as his teacher. But aside from Max Linder's last few Hollywood films, French comedies never went beyond their pre-1914 levels. The American comedy then became a huge success (and rightfully so), crushing the French comedy. Since the inception of the sound film (if not Chaplin), Hollywood has always been the leader in cinematic comedy: firstly, the three brothers WC Fields, Marx and, to a lesser extent, Laurel & Hardy, have revived and developed the comedy tradition, and, at the same time, there have been A new genre of dramatic similarity: "American Comedy".
In France, on the contrary, the spoken language is only borrowed in an attempt to transform popular comedy. And this change is pretty clumsy. If you need to know who has been the best in comedy since 1930, there are only two actors, Raimu and Fernandel. Strangely, though, the films starring these two comedic geeks are almost all shit. Without Marcel Pagnol, and without the four or five worthy productions he wrote and directed, we would simply not be able to name a film of a quality commensurate with the talents of both of them (starring Fernandel and directed by Christian Jacque in that peculiar but The neglected film "Francois 1" is an exception. Also, Noel-Noel's superficial but still interesting works are justified). One thing is telling: In 1934, after the failure of the comedy Dernier Milliardaire, Rene Clair left French cinema for England and later Hollywood. From this, we can see that what was lacking in French films at that time was not a talented actor, but a comic style and concept.
I've purposely left out the unique and special effort to revive the French tradition of burlesque comedy, and I'm referring to the efforts of the Prevert brothers. Some people want to see the advent of L'Affaire est dans le sac (1932), Adieu Leonard (1943), and Le Voyage surprise (1946) as films The revival of comedy. According to them, these films are masterpieces of genius, but they are not understood. I, like the viewers who are not interested in these films, disagree with this view. Of course, this kind of attempt is not insignificant, and after all, it is commendable, but it is doomed to fail due to excessive rationalization. In the Prevert brothers' pen, a gimmick is always a concept, and then finds its visual image in a reverse way, so the audience can only feel ridiculous after thinking about it from the visual gimmick to its conceptual intention . It's the thought process of appreciating untitled humor, and it's why one of our best humor painters, Maurice Henry, has never been able to come up with a joke for a movie. Aside from the overly rationalized structure of the gimmick, which elicits laughter only on reflection, there is an unnatural quality to humor that demands too much tacit understanding from the audience. Movie comedy (and, of course, stage comedy) cannot be without a certain universal appeal. A personal joke is not a comedy. Among the films shot with Prevert-style humor, there is only one film that overcomes the shortcomings of less action and more ideas and is more successful, and this is "The Strange Thing" (Drole de Drame, 1937). However, this film is different, director Marcel Carne borrowed from the "Threepenny Opera" (L'Opera de quat'sous) when making the film, and also drew inspiration from British humor. Against the bleak historical backdrop of comedy, Jour de fete stands out as something special. The story content of this film is familiar to everyone. The film was shot almost in a hurry and the cost is extremely low. At the time, no distributor was willing to buy the film. Later, it became the popular film of the year, and the revenue was ten times the cost.
Jacques Tati shot to fame. However, one may be skeptical that the success of "Festival" has exhausted its creator's talents. Although this film has inherited the excellent tradition of funny comedy. But it is truly extraordinary, innovative, and full of unique comedy. However, on the one hand, people consider that if the earth is really talented, he will not be buried in the music and dance hall for 20 years; on the other hand, people worry about whether the author of the film can maintain this unique style next time. Maybe, like Don Camillo's return, we'll see what's new in this lovable postman, but it's a shame to mess around like that, and feel that the earth is unwise and doesn't know how to stop .
However, Dadi not only did not use the character he created again (although the postman's reputation is a "gold mine"), but spent four years making a second film for us, which is not inferior to "Festival", By comparison, that first film was a rudimentary study. This is Vacances de M. Hulot (Vacances de M. Hulot), a film of extraordinary significance. Not only was it the most important comedy in world cinema after the Marx Brothers and Fields, but it was also a major event in the history of sound cinema.
Like all great comedians, the earth first creates a world before it makes us laugh, a world arranged around the character it plays, like a saturated solution formed around a grain of salt thrown into the liquid Like crystals. The character made by the earth is, of course, comical, but his comicality is almost always incidental and always related to the world around him. He probably didn't make the most hilarious gimmicks himself, since M. Hulot is only a metaphysical embodiment of the state of chaos (wherever he went, there was always a prolonged chaos).
But if we wish to proceed with the analysis of the character, we shall immediately see that, unlike the improvised comedy tradition carried over by the burlesque comedy, the uniqueness of this character lies in a certain incompleteness. The protagonist of an improv comedy represents the nature of a comedy, and the role of the character is distinct and consistent. On the contrary, M. Hulot seems to be characterized by a shyness to fully affirm his own existence. He is always hesitant and elusive: he elevates fearfulness to the level of an ontological principle. However, it is this detached attitude of M. Hulot from the world around him that must be the cause of all unpleasant events, because it does not conform to the norms of interest and of society. Mr. Hulot is by nature anachronistic. However, this is not to say that M. Hulot is clumsy. On the contrary, M. Hulot is extremely graceful, an "angel of impetuousness", and the chaos he causes is a chaos of tenderness and freedom. Significantly, the only child in the film is a character that is both graceful and utterly endearing. Only the kids don't come here for "vacation assignments". The children don't care about Mr. Luo. He is their badge and can always get along closely. Like children, he doesn't think it's disrespectful to play games, and he doesn't care about which kind of entertainment is elegant and which kind of entertainment is low. If there was only one person dancing at the masquerade, it would be M. Hulot, and he took it all in the emptiness. The fireworks kept as ordered by the retired major were reimbursed by Hulot with a single match.
But what about M. Hulot outside of holidays? We could have imagined a career, at least an errand, for every guest who came to this ridiculous beach for a temporary stop. We can even determine the origin of the cars and trains that go from various places to a certain part of the seashore at the beginning of the film, as if by mysterious signal they envelop the place in an instant. However, the age of Mr. Hulot's old bull's car cannot be traced, and in fact, where it came from: it is beyond time. For Mr. Luo himself, we would like to make the following assumption: the clock for calculating attendance on July 1 every year finally stopped, and in some remote places on the seashore and in the countryside, a slow passage temporarily formed, self-contained, like a tide. A time flow like the fluctuation cycle. At this time, after disappearing for ten months, Hulot naturally reappeared on the beach, as if it were a camera. It's a time full of repetitive, useless movements, which seem to pass reluctantly, and come to a complete standstill by the lunch break. However, this is a time of ritual, and entertainment is like a routine, a formal ritual, which determines the rhythm of time, and is stricter than office hours.
Therefore, for Mr. Luo, there is no "plot" at all, because a story requires meaning, a direction of advancement in time flow from cause to effect, a beginning and an end. On the contrary, "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" can only be a concatenation of time that is related to each other in meaning and independent of time in drama. Every episode of the protagonist's misfortune and misfortune can begin with this sentence: "Once again, Mr. Hulot..." Obviously, I have never seen such a way of using time as a material, and time has almost become the object of the film's description. It is even more perfect and fuller than the experimental film whose length is consistent with the time of the story. Hulot inspired how we should represent the temporal dimension of our movements.
In this small world of vacation, the movements of the punctual board seem very absurd. Only M. Hulot is never punctual, because he alone experiences this flow of time while others try to restore a meaningless order: the opening and closing of the dining-room door is the rhythm of this order. The movement of the punctual board only stretches time, like the steaming, slowly stretched pile of syrup on the confectioner's stall that upsets M. Hulot. Hu Luo became Sisyphus, and the syrup kept falling, and he kept running over.
However, the sound part adds more time to the film than the picture does. This is also a major innovation of the earth, and it is the most unique in technology. It is often said that his innovation is some kind of cluttered sound effect, in which there are occasional fragments of words that are clearly distinguishable and thus more ridiculous, this is a misunderstanding, this is just an impression when you listen to it without paying attention. . In fact, there are not many slurring sound elements (such as announcements from station loudspeakers, but the gimmick is realistic). On the contrary, all the cleverness of the earth is to destroy clarity with clarity. Dialogue is by no means incomprehensible, but meaningless, and the meaninglessness of dialogue is revealed through the clarity of dialogue. In particular, Dadi uses the distortion of the loudness relationship of different sound levels to achieve this effect. He even often retains the sound of a scene outside the screen to set off the silent time in the screen. On the whole, the sound background in this kind of film is made up of real elements: dialogue fragments, shouts, arguments; however, no sound is strictly in a dramatic situation. An incongruous sound is particularly distorted compared to the sound background that is suitable for it. For example, a night in a hotel where travelers were reading, arguing, or playing cards: Hulot was playing table tennis, and the celluloid balls made a surprising noise. Once, the sound seemed to increase by a point. The real, recorded sound material on the beach is the basis of this film, and in the real sound comes unnatural sounds, which are still clearly discernible, but always detached. This real sound combined with this distorted sound creates the inevitable effect of sound being hollow and boring in this human world. Undoubtedly, the physical character of discourse, the anatomy of discourse, has never been so relentlessly shown in the past. We are accustomed to attaching a meaning to words, even if it has no meaning, and we do not mock language, often through visual imagery. In this film, however, the words are stripped of all suave sociality, and it seems that naked people wander there, grotesquely and indecently. We seemed to see some words float out of the radio like a string of red balloons, while others seemed to condense into clouds that circled over people's heads and then, fluttered in the wind, down to the tip of our noses. But, worst of all, these words just have meaning, and if you just close your eyes and listen to the outside noise with your heart, you will eventually discover their meaning. The earth sometimes surreptitiously introduces a completely false voice, but we have been involved in this mixed world of voices, and we do not expect to express nonsense. discussion. For example, if we do not consciously distinguish the sound effects of fireworks, it is not easy to hear the sound of shells exploding. It is the sound that adds depth to Hulot's world and accentuates the emotion. If you want to find out where the faint sadness at the end of the film, the feeling of loss comes from, maybe you will find the feeling that comes from the sudden silence of everything at this time. The frolicking cries of the children accompany the images of the beach throughout the film, and the first images of silence signify the end of the holiday.
M. Hulot was left alone, the hotel guests left him because he destroyed their fireworks, and they did not forgive him. He walked over to the two little guys and threw a handful of sand on each other. However, a few friends quietly came to say goodbye to him, one was an old English woman who was scoring points on the tennis court, one was the young son of the gentleman who called the old man, and the other was a husband who scattered all day... Among the group of people who are constrained by their holiday life, only these few people still have a shimmer of freedom and poetry in them. This unfinished epilogue is exquisite enough to rival Chaplin's masterpiece.
Like all great comedies, the comedy in M. Hulot's Holiday is the result of cold observation. "Une si jolie petite plage" (Une si jolie petite plage) directed by Yves Allegret and Jacques Sigurd is a rose-colored book in comparison to Jacques Tati's (referring to lyrical, but simple, childish literature written for children works) a class. But Jacques Tati's comedy doesn't seem pessimistic, at least not as much as Chaplin's (perhaps the surest guarantee of its brilliance). The figure shaped by the earth contrasts with the stupidity of the world around him, showing a deft disposition; he shows that the unexpected can happen at any time and break the order of the stupid, like a tire as a wreath on a cemetery, Turn a funeral into a frolic.
View more about Monsieur Hulot's Holiday reviews
