We start off the Best of 2012 celebration with a look back at some of the old films that were new to me of last year. I am a self-proclaimed movie collector, my father who has seen my collection has said on more than one occasion that I could open my own film store, and perhaps I will if it weren't for my some what compulsive desire to keep my films all to my self. I have this paranoia that if I lend out my films to anyone, they will not get returned, and there has been a presidense set, I had to re-purchase two films that were lost by lending them out. But that is neither here nor there, plus this is supposed to be a celebration!
My collection of films has grown tremendously over last year as I continue my search for classics or just simple titles that I have always been curious about and simply needed to own.
There have been a lot of great movies that were new to me from last year, among them were Busby Berkley musicals such as "42nd Street", "Dames" and especially "Footlight Parade", the Joan Crawford classic noir "Possession", Douglas Sirk's 50s melodrama "Imitation of Life", John Carpenter's horror sci-fi "The Thing", Robert Altman's television movie "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial", D.W. Griffith's early silent films "Intolerance", and "Broken Blossoms", Fritz Lang's newly restored silent masterpiece in two parts "Die Nibelungen", and one of the best Hollywood weepies I've ever seen King Vidor's "The Champ" with Wallace Beery's Oscar winning role as a drunk boxer and Jackie Cooper in one of the best child performances ever put on screen as his son who looks out for him.
There was something about these films I loved, and I probably could make an alternate top ten list with all of them, and was difficult trying to figure out which one I would pick as my favorite, but out of all of them, the one that remained the most interesting, and the one I would want to revisit right away would be Jacques Tati's 1953 comedy "M. Hulot's Holiday".
Jacques Tati was a filmmaker who didn't make a lot of films, I believe only six, I have only seen one other of his films, the brilliant "Playtime", which is a comedy labyrinth where Tati created a whole high tech city for himself to play in and make his observations on getting lost in the fast paced technologically advanced modern world. I have seen "Playtime" at least four times now, and I it always surprises me with its comic invention. One thing about it though that remained a mystery to me was the M. Hulot character that Tati played in the film.
Not knowing much about the cultural impact Tati's character had in the context of film, "Playtime" left me curious about who this Hulot fellow was all about. Hulot actually isn't very prominent in the grand scheme of "Playtime", one reason was because by that time, Tati was perhaps not interested in showing off the character as much anymore, and not wanting him to get in the way of his more ambitious ideas.
"M. Hulot's Holiday" however was the first time Tati played the character, and even though he doesn't dominate every scene like other screen comedians might do, he is no doubt the star. The film plays like a bunch of comedic vignettes all strung together through the characters and situations Hulot meets and gets into while on holiday at a seaside resort.
Tati was a student of the silent comedy of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy, he makes the film almost completely silent. There is dialogue said, but most of it is entirely inconsequential. Hulot is a comic character, but unlike Keaton and Chaplin, he seems more like an observer who just happens to occasionally get himself into trouble. While Hulot does provide most of the gags, he doesn't instigate all of them. Tati seemed to be more interested in the world itself and the people in it, he seemed to find humour in everyday things.
The film is not as ambitious as "Playtime", but it's just as inventive, this is one of the great comedy films, and Jacques Tati was one of the great comic filmmakers, I will probably get more in depth with "M Hulot's Holiday" as I revisit it, but I would say it's the best old film I saw last year just for the fact that it's so much one of a kind much like its creator.
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