Mon Oncle -- What Makes This Movie Great? (Episode 94)

[@WeeGrahamsaccount]

There is a child like immediacy about this film and the simple enjoyment of small things, the moment when the window shines down to the bird and it sings, the old man shuffling along and the huge car, the children pranking the car drivers who think they have crashed into another car, the children getting people to walk into a lamp post which is echoed later in the film when the father and son touchingly connect for the first time by holding hands. Mr Hulot is a man child with an amusing innocence who finds the modernist world is strange and absurd and possibly pretentious. I love this film as it shows a certain simple joie de vivre that's infectious. Thank you

[@LearningaboutMovies]

great comment, thank you!

[@onur_osman]

I love the way that this film uses architecture and its set as a whole to enhance its running gags. I think that's its most impressive feature for me. Great video!

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you. indeed, the main characters might even be the two or more kinds of architecture, which creates the people who inhabit them, in a way.

[@dominichemphill]

I absolutely love Tati, and this is an amazing film. It’s a particularly heartwarming and lovable movie with great symbolism and images. My particular favourite image has to be the broken down wall separating the older town where Hulot lives and the ultra-modernistic town. Such a simple yet powerful image that in essence describes the main message of the movie in my opinion.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

yes, that image is remarkable.

[@lenzotrumpet]

M.Hurlot is a genuine gentleman.Always tips his hat .Picks up things for people and always ladies first..

[@lenzotrumpet]

You can not help but like some one like Hurlot

[@manonymous4737]

@@LearningaboutMovies and then at the very end there are workers demolishing that old building as they drive off...so sad, the destruction of the old France.

[@alanwatson4249]

Absolutely right about the tradition running through Chaplin, Keaton to Tati. Such a love of humanity. Great comment and analysis.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you.

[@dolphinbear661]

This film encapsulates the importance of art, fashion and design, but also puts them in their proper place behind human interaction. I just love everything about it

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you.

[@judypolstra]

A friend just lent me this film. I'm new to Tati. I can't WAIT to watch it!

[@robertmatthews8302]

Jacques Tati was undoubtably one of the all time greats in the world of film, probably THE greatest in my eyes !

[@springsogourne]

The scene with the fish and dog under the table is brilliant!

[@thistree9028]

Thank you for your thoughtful critique..yeah, I get and love Tati…❤ The contrast between modernism and nostalgic old time simplicity…

[@LearningaboutMovies]

you're welcome. thank you.

[@AlrightProductions]

What a coincidence! My professor is making us analyze this film over the weekend, and I'm sure this video will help out a ton! Keep up the great work, you're helping me through my classes haha

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thanks, glad to help.

[@chrishelbling3879]

That one shot of the modern house late at night, with mom & dad silhouetted peering out, moving their heads in sync, like the house's eyeballs peering to and fro... I mean, c'mon, a Buster Keaton gag right there. Saying that house has a life of its own, over the family.

[@freddiemarshall769]

I just watched this recently - I absolutely loved it!

[@LearningaboutMovies]

excellent!

[@marielaurechablais2978]

Jacques Tati, mon idole ❤

[@alisonmaraillet7205]

Mon Oncle is from 1958 - Jacques Tati had made several other movies before - notable Jour de Fete in 1949.

[@manonymous4737]

I lose it at that look that Hulot gives when he needs the gate opened 7:22 . He halts as he suddenly realises that he can't open the gate, it needs to be done for him and he turns his head sharply to look at the wife - he's just so lost in that world.

[@jimmyj1969]

Ah, Tati! One of my favourites! Tati creates a whole world (where you wish to be a part of!)- in which comedy just happens in a corner somewhere, not under the direct spotlight! So influential for so many directors (Blake Edwards' The Party comes to mind)!

[@LearningaboutMovies]

coming up Thursday is a video on Tati.

[@dominichemphill]

I’m also curious, where do you get so many movie scenes from smaller films like this? I can’t find very many on KZbin let alone in high quality.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

I own the films and digitize them as mp4s. Easy also to do this, temporarily, from discs from libraries.

[@roaminronin7818]

Thanks for a new perspective Josh, while I liked it I enjoyed PlayTime & Hulots Holiday a bit more since I found them funnier. I've only seen them all once but I found this one more obvious & but still admirable, I think I wanted to laugh or chuckle more than I did... sometimes viewing from a diff angle helps so I'm sure I'll ck out again

[@LearningaboutMovies]

you're welcome.

[@jeroenl8352]

I always watched this movie with my parents when I was little...

[@LearningaboutMovies]

very interesting -- worth thanking your parents for, if they are still with us.

[@ronaldmilner8932]

Hello Professor, I watched Mon Oncle several years ago, and it is a very funny commentary on modern life, very French film. Also I just finished "A man escaped" based on your recommendation, great film.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

excellent!

[@springsogourne]

Absolutely charming movie!

[@Larkinchance]

Querky Modern... I love this movie. This only 12 years after the privations of WW2

[@hejskipejski5751]

Always a pleasure to hear your take on cinema gems, Mon Oncle a personal favourite of mine. What do you think about the dinner/anniversary sequence and what do you make of it? Personally I feel Tati's message is quite strong there. Cheers from Sweden!

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you. it's been two months since I watched it and made the video. you are referring to the backyard scene? what did you think of it? it's a ridiculous social gathering in which the Hulot character does not fit in at all. He has to leave in the end (of the movie), as if he will no longer fit into French society!

[@hejskipejski5751]

@@LearningaboutMovies That is a great take on the scene! Thanks a lot!

[@LearningaboutMovies]

as well, the Hulot character cannot help but be against the modern designs at the house. He keeps accidentally puncturing the fish line, and he cuts the bushes. The other commenters might be right here: that it's definitely a movie where Tati uses Hulot to attack the "modern." Maybe it's too obvious a message -- Truffaut thought so, in his review (I forget which book of his that's in) -- but that message is still relevant.

[@ΓιώργοςΠετρουλάκης-ρ5β]

Always wondered exactly which movies appear in your intro.😄

[@LearningaboutMovies]

I even cut them out of this video. I remember just grabbing a few: Harold and Maude; Hellboy 2; The Fountain; The Searchers. What else? Even I forget!

[@voyagetoart3115]

Hlo! Do you have an idea why Hulot was cutting the tree tree branches in the Garden party? Later he also came back to do the same at night, but I failed to get it.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

I don't remember that part. Hopefully someone else will help. Wasn't he trying to correct some mistake he made, but then made it worse?

[@CN-ny5bp]

Almost: his nephew accidentally brakes one of the branches and Hulot tries to cover it by (not that) sneakingly cutting the others :)

[@race31]

Wonderful movie :D

[@richardsreviews8820]

I prefer Mr. Hulot’s holiday to this film. I find it funnier. The film is also shorter so the film feels more dense with jokes. Mon Oncle does have better social commentary, the sets are great, and the color cinematography is incredible. I remember being tired when I watched Mon Oncle so maybe I will like it more if I see it again. Side note: Do you know anything about the technical aspects of the film, specifically the color cinematography? This film and Le Samourai have a great look to them in terms of the creaminess of the colors and the depth of the shadows. American color films from the 60s don’t have the same look.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

that I don't, though I just watched "The Searchers," filmed about the same time. It's in VistaVision, which you can look up and read about the technical specs of. My guess is that Tati and Melville had something like that available to them, though I don't know whether it was the same or some other novel version.

[@tejnoortj4448]

there is also an English version of the film, I haven't seen it but would like to know if you have and is it worth it

[@LearningaboutMovies]

I haven't. Hard to imagine it's better, although it would be interesting for historical reasons.

[@tejnoortj4448]

@@LearningaboutMovies its on the criterion channel

[@luisalthaus7249]

I watched this movie in 1959 in Buenos Aires Argentina I was only 5 years old.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

wow, that is remarkable. thanks for sharing.

[@vulgarlang]

Love the channel. I guess we won't agree with everything though. Personally, I found Tati's critiques of modernism in both Mon Oncle and Playtime to be very heavy handed and extremely repetitive. In this one, he gets free reign to design his own overly disgustingly grey, empty, cold house as a "stand in" for modernism. For me it feels like a bit of a Straw Man argument. I've never seen a modern home THAT hideous. But I've seen plenty of nice-ish modern homes. There are definitely very valid criticism to made of modernism, back then and today now. But Tati's blanket statement that new fangled appliances are impractical, made cheaply and break quickly just feels like old-person technophobia/nostalgia for the good old days. I do get that you have to exaggerate to do satire. I guess I just never laughed at any of the gags and got tired of the message by the 30 minute mark. I'm also not against movies having no plot, but I'm generally more impressed when your message can be disguised within an actual story.

[@LearningaboutMovies]

thank you. The excuse, usually, is that exaggeration is showing you an individual/social vision of something. You, if you can't see it, can get that other perspective better through what Tati is doing to modernism here. And of course, it's not just the description of a vision, it's an argument for it. Which is where your comment comes in!

[@RSEFX]

The modernism depicted in this film is a way to show how humans are now trying to homogenize and formalize everything they create and use to make their innate individual goofiness appear to be non-goofy via the sheer ubiquitous presence of it, ie to hide it in plain, bland, off-white-and-gray-ish box-y sight. ;-7

[@LearningaboutMovies]

makes sense to me.

[@RSEFX]

@@LearningaboutMovies Very much enjoying your videos, your observations, and your enthusiasm.