Word: hulot
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DIED. Jacques Tati, 75, whimsical French film maker, forever associated with his gangly, amiable and bewildered persona Monsieur Hulot; of a lung blood clot. A droll mime, Tati made films (Mr. Hulot's Holiday, 1954; the Oscar-winning Mon Onde, 1958; four others) that were meticulously wrought explosions of philosophical slapstick with little dialogue and less plot, suggesting that modern values are topsy-turvy. Said he: "What I am trying to prove is that at bottom everyone is amusing...
...Hulot's Holiday--Sunday at 2:50, 6:15 and 9:40 p.m., Monday and Tuesday at 6:15 and 9:40 p.m.; with Hiroshima Mon Amour, Sunday at 4:35 and 8 p.m., Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m.; Brattle Theater
...enthusiasm that has greeted these latest adventures of Mr. Hulot appears to be the product of critical wistfulness. Tati is the last in a once great tradition of pantomimic screen comedians. Out of a desire to keep that tradition alive, writers seize on the odd, amusing bits in his films, overpraising them while ignoring Tati-Hulot's glaring inadequacies...
...aimlessness that hangs so heavily around Playtime is thickened by the fact that Hulot cannot be said to be a character in the sense that Chaplin's Tramp or Keaton's Great Stone Face was. He is passive where they were active-even revolutionary-in their relationship to the things and the people who tormented them. Chaplin was insouciantly defiant when pressed, Keaton manically inventive. Both were also incurable romantics. They were people of dimension, people with plans and aspirations and a wide range of feeling. One could identify with them, suffer and exult with them...
...Hulot, on the other hand, is just a pleasantly boring presence, a cipher who shows no feelings beyond a spaniel-like curiosity and momentary flutters of frustration that never approach the level of anxiety, let alone threaten him with breakdown. He and the people he encounters are scarcely less abstract than their settings, juiceless and lifeless. Going to a Tati movie for laughs is about as practical as going to an exhibition of Mondrian paintings with the same goal in mind, though the painter may actually excel the actor in terms of motion and emotion. · Richard Schickel