Mr. Hulots Holiday

Mr. Hulots Holiday
by Jacques Tati

Mr. Hulots Holiday was a great comedy where the main character got into many different catastrophes one after another. He goes to the beach in a ratty old car and with a smile on his face expecting a great time, but he ends up in different awkward situations where he is always the one that messed up. Mr. Hulot was a very strange character with a gawky body shape and his weird clothes, he was also very polite to everyone he met and introduced himself to everyone. I thought this movie was quite hilarious because when Mr. Hulot screws something up he somehow always adds to that mess by doing something else. The movie is basically silent except for a few greetings and goodbyes. This is significant because it makes the comedy funnier, it just emphasizes the little jokes more than if everyone was talking the whole time. Tati made the character Hulot funny but he did not makes the character dwell on the joke for very long, he made him do the joke and get the laughs and then move on. This movie is very light, it does not have a deep meaning other than when you go on vacation you should enjoy yourself. Many of the characters had structured days, of when they eat and how to act on vacation, but Mr. Hulot had fun during his vacation. The last night at the beach Mr. Hulot was acting very silly and somehow he ended up in the fireworks hut and set off all the fireworks. Everyone was very upset because the fireworks woke them up, but Mr. Hulot found that this accident was beautiful and enjoyed them. That is the main message of this movie, that people should relax and enjoy their vacations and to not get upset over every small detail. Mr. Hulot definitly helped some people on vacation to enjoy themselves while he just bothered others. This was a great movie with its simplistic humor and upbeat music, I really enjoyed it.

Ma Nuit chez Maud

My Night At Mauds

Eric Rohmer

My thoughts on the Film

This movie was very interesting, the whole movie revolved around the main character who was a catholic engineer. The story began as he went to church where he keeps looking at this blonde girl with lust. He tried to follow her after church to talk but lost her in the crowd. He later meets an old friend Vidal, who is now a philosophy professor and they get a drink together. They talk about many different philosophies but mostly about Pascal’s theories. Vidal is very happy to have seen his old friend again and invites him to go to his lover Maud’s place after the midnight mass service that the main character wanted to go to. Vidal wants the main character to go with him to Maud’s place because he does not want to sleep with her and feels like they might become friends. Maud has the two of them over for diner and while they are eating the main character confesses he is a practicing catholic and Maud suddenly is interested in him. She duels with him over if God is real and the ways of Catholics which makes him prove to himself that god is real. Maud seems to dislike Catholics for some reason because she really argues with him over the idea of god. Pascal is brought into the picture again as they argue that he does not believe in God for certain reasons. The main character thinks Pascal is wrong about his theory of Jansenism morality, which is to serve God in the utmost way and have a deep religious passion. He believes that Pascal’s argument is wrong about Jansenism because he condemns good food. Then to change the subject Maud and Vidal want to know about the main characters love life. They believe that he already has a girlfriend and they wonder if he has made love to her. They joke about how he should not do that if he is a true Catholic but the main character confesses that he has had many lovers in the past but they were never just for one night. He believes that it is wrong if you sleep with someone and then leave them because its not a true relationship. Then Vidal and the main character notice its snowing outside and Vidal makes up an excuse to leave them alone. The main character is forced into staying her place because she is scared that he will get into a car accident and die on the way home. She tricks him by saying he can stay in the spare bedroom but there is no spare bedroom. He tries to get away by asking if she was to tired to talk but she keeps insisting she is not to tired and wants him to stay. Maud confides in him by talking about her ex-husband who cheated on him with a practicing Catholic that talked just like the main character does. She says that she went crazy knowing that her husband was in love with this girl but she was also having an affair with a man. Her lover died in a car accident when it was snowing and that was why she did not want him to drive home in the snow. Maud is laying in her bed naked now because she is about to go to sleep and the main character does not want to be seduced by her so he tried to at first sleep in a chair, but obviously being uncomfortable he lays in the bed next to her. In the middle of the night he looks cold and pulls the blanket over himself so Maud moved closer and he kissed her. When he realized what he did he pushes her away and she runs away naked. He is embarrassed by his own actions and decides to leave but she comes out clothed and asking why he is leaving and begs him to come to the mountains later that day with her and Vidal. She tells him that she doesn’t like when a man doesn’t know his own mind. The next morning he gets ready to go to the mountains and is waiting in a café for his friends when he sees the girl from the church, Francoise. He chases after he and asks her out she agrees to a date after Sunday’s mass. They are both happy and he leaves to go meet his friends again. On the mountain Vidal has a date so Maud and him are by themselves. He tenderly holds Maud but she tells him that it would never work in a very sly way. He departs from her that evening promising that he will call her before she leaves the city. On the way home he spots Francoise walking and gives her a ride home. His car gets stuck in the snow and Francoise lets him sleep in her spare bedroom. They were talking together about many different things that night and he tells her that he loves her. She seemed kind of uncomfortable when he said that but she said that she likes him. He tried to sleep but just smoked many cigarettes, when he was out of matches he went to her bedroom to see if she had any and she was still awake reading, which it looked like he admired that about her. The next morning they go to church together and after he confesses his love again and when she pulled away again he asks why she is doing that. She explains that she just got out of a love affair with a married man. She says that she loved this man but he didn’t want to see her anymore and that it was hard for her. He confesses then that the morning he came up to her he slept over a woman’s place and she said that the past is the past and not to talk about it anymore. Later that night the couple runs into Vidal who tells him that Maud has left and won’t come back for a while. He recognized Francoise but did not say how they knew each other. Five years later he is still together with Francoise and has a child together when they run into Maud at the beach. Maud says that she believed that they belonged together and wishes them well. She said that she remarried but that marriage did not work either. When the main character rejoins his family at the beach he realized that Francoise affair was with Maud’s husband and she again says that the past is the past. I believe that this was a very interesting film for arguments about God and if he was real or not. Also the relationship between Maud and the main character was very complex, it seemed that she helped him realize that he did not want to just go around with different girls anymore but to get married to a woman that shares the same values. Maud was very alluring and even though she made him break once by tempting him in her bed she did not break his beliefs because he knew he was doing wrong and did not make love to her. I really liked this movie because it was so simple the way that they shot it was just regular angles so it seemed like real life and the main character seemed pretty normal looking for love and questioning his religion.

Interesting Facts about the Movie

My night at Maud’s was the third film in Rohmer’s series of Six Moral Tales. In this case moral means moralist tradition which means that it is really associated with the greatest French authors classical period of writing. He refers to authors such as Pascal, Moliere, Racine, La Rochefoucauld, La Fontaine, and La Bruyere. These writers focused on psychological analysis of humans and their behaviors in social and not social forms. Rohmer was very interested in the way humans act towards one another and the way they think about many different things like the meaning of life, if there is a god, and falling in and out of love. The movies always seem to revolve around a man being in love with a woman in the beginning of the movie and then is seduced by other women but always goes back to the initial woman. Just like in this movie the main character is interested in Francoise and then is seduced by Maud but he returned to Francoise at the end (Singerman 314). The movie also revolves around the idea of Pascal’s theme of Jansenism and Jesuitism. The main character rereads the book Thoughts by Pascal and is interested in its idea of Jansenism which is the Catholic revolution where many people took a deeper step in their faith and become almost priest like. These people believe that sensual pleasure is a sin, and this means that they cannot even like good food. They must be completely involved in the studies of God and the practices of the Catholic church. The main character didn’t like this idea when he reread the book because he believed it was a sin not to take pleasure from food or things that make him happy (Singerman 316). One other interesting fact about the film is that the director decided to film it in black and white. He believed that this was appropriate for the main character and it fit in with the season of winter (Singerman 319). This movie had many interesting qualities, I feel like we watched it to see the revolution of thinking of the afterlife and sexuality at that time period. The movie explored many aspects of the time period and how people lived.

Works Cited

Singerman, Alan. French Cinema The Student's Book. English Edition. Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2006.

Francois Truffaut
Jules et Jim

My Perception
There are three main characters in this movie: Catherine, Jules and Jim. They each had very interesting lives and very different personalities. Jules and Jim became friends in the beginning of the movie. They hit it off right away and became best friends, where they did everything together. They share some interest in literature, sports, and women. Jim is outgoing with women and is very good at making them fall in love with him. Jules on the other hand does not have luck with the ladies and is polite and quite. Then there is Catherine, a young lady that has a beautiful mysterious smile that entrances both men. Jules called her first by saying, “not this one Jim.” This was an important part because later they both dated her. Catherine was an interesting character because of her sense of existentialism in her personality. One of my favorite scenes was when everyone were walking back from the theater and Catherine was tired of hearing Jules and Jim argue over the plot to the play and she jumped into the canal. She is very different from the normal girls in movies. Catherine had almost a childlike innocence to her, she attracted many men because of her smile and enthusiasm towards life. Jules married Catherine because he loved her so much and she became pregnant. Then World War 1 broke out and Jules found himself fighting against Jim on the battle field. They were constantly afraid that they would accidentally shoot each other because they were on opposite sides. In this scene the men were fighting in trenches and we saw bombs going off and each of them men were afraid. Then it showed how Catherine was cheating on Jules at home because she was lonely and she felt like he left her, but he had to serve in the army. Then the complicated story line comes in. Jim comes to visit Jules and Catherine and their daughter Sabine, while he is staying there Catherine seduces Jim and makes him fall in love with her. This is complicated because Catherine will leave Jules in an instant to go with Jim but Jim cannot hurt Jules like this because they are such good friends. They all live together now, Catherine sleeps with Jim and Jules is just happy being able to see Catherine and Sabine every day. They are all very happy until Jim must go back to Paris for business and Catherine cannot take that he must be cheating on her with Gilberte and so Catherine goes to Albert. They make up from cheating on each other and then try to have a baby together. This does not work and Catherine had a miscarriage and refuses to see Jim. After some time has passed, they all meet for lunch in a little village. Then Catherine leaves the lunch to spend the night with Albert. When she leaves she feels like she is punishing Jim for leaving her before but he does not feel bad about it. Then Jim tells Catherine about how he is going to marry Gilberte and have children with her and Catherine freaks out and tries to kill him. She is upset because she loves Jim and doesn’t want to see him with anyone else, when she is with others all the time. Everyone meets one last time by accident at a movie and they go out to lunch. Catherine wants to go for a ride with Jim one last time and asked Jules to wait. She crashed the car into the watery depths of a river and takes Jims life. Then all we see is Jules taking the ashes of his wife and his best friend to the cemetery. This was a very sad ending because they were all happy one last time but Catherine had to take Jim’s life. I loved one of the things Catherine said during this film “You told me: I love you. I told you: Wait. I was going to say: Take me. You said: Go away” I really liked this little exert that Catherine said because it shows how she was feeling, she has such an interesting role in the lives of these two men and she is very complex.

Jean Renoir

The Rules of the Game

La Regle du jeu

Summary

Andre Jurieu is an aviator that is in love with Christine. He confesses his love to her over the broadcast. She hears him say this on the air and goes to her husband, Robert de La Chesnaye to deny the whole story. He believes her and then makes a decision to break up with his mistress, Genevieve (Singerman, 98).

Andre is very upset after this scandalous indiscretion on the radio he attempts to committee suicide. His best friend Octave criticizes him because he does not know anything about the social elite and how they work. This announcement on the air was a horrendous scandal and Andre did not know this. Octave knew Christine as a child and convinces her and Robert to invite Andre with them to a hunting party in the country (Singerman, 98).

At the castle in the country a fight breaks out between game warden Schumacher and Marceau (who was poaching on his land). Robert solves the fight by giving Marceau a job at the castle. Andre is given a heroes welcome at the castle and Christine decides to deny their love even more but no one really believes her. Robert is very happy with this announcement and decides that after the hunt there will be a big party in Andre Juries' honor. A little flirting is also happening with Marceau (the new servant) and Lisette (Schumacher's husband) (Singerman, 98).

The next day is the hunt. This is an elaborate scene showing men chasing rabbits. After the hunt Robert tells Genevieve that the affair is over, she wanted one last embrace. As they embrace Christine sees this and gets the wrong impression. She is very jealous and decides to flirt with any suitor that comes along, at the party (Singerman, 98).

At the party Christine is flirting with Saint-Aubin as Andre Jurieu is jealously watching. Andre picks a fight with Saint-Aubin in front of everyone. Schumacher is trying to control his wife as she is flirting with Marceau when he catches them together in the kitchen. Schumacher takes several shots with his revolver at Marceau and Robert steps in to control the situation. Robert fires both Schumacher and Marceau on the spot. Robert then feels like Andre loves his wife more than he does and lets her go in his mind (Singerman, 99).

While this is all going on Christine went outside with Octave who then confesses his love for her. She immediately wanted to run away with him so he went inside to get his jacket. Schumacher and Marceau watch the two of them in the darkness and both become jealous, not knowing that Christine was dressed as her maid Lisette. When Octave goes inside to get his coat Lisette makes Octave realize that he is not right for Christine and Octave gives his coat to Andre and sends him to Christine in his place. Schumacher mistakes Andre for Octave and shoots him. Marceau and Octave leave the castle because they cannot believe what has happened. Robert convinces everyone that the death was a accident and that his warden just thought that he was poaching on the land (Singerman, 99).

My Perception

I really liked this film, it fit my expectations. Some parts I thought were going to be more interesting than the reading led on it would be. Such as the hunting scene, the book walked about how long it took to film this scene and the amount of energy that went into it. It sounded like the scene would be fantastic but it was just boring. Also I thought that Octave was a very funny character which surprised me. I really enjoyed the party scene. It was full of amazement and adventure. So many different things were happening at once. Lissette and Marceau were running away to flirt while being chased by Schumacher. Then Christine and Saint-Aubin were running around together until Andre and Saint-Aubin fought. The scene was hectic and so many different plots were happening at once it was exciting. One scene I did not like was the one where Robert realized how much he loves Christine, in the beginning. I thought they would of confessed their love more out-front, not just Christine saying “I trust you” and Robert calling off his affair. It was very disappointing.

What other Critics Said

This movie was rejected several times in the public's eyes in 1939. Many people found this to be scandalous and wrong while others thought it offended patriotism, it was incomprehensible, and some thought it was anti-Semitic. He tried to cut out the parts of the film that were thought of as bad. He made the movie from 1h50 to 1h25. These movies circulated and eventually some tried to piece back together the original movie. It wasn't until 1972 that the movie was ranked the second best film of all time (Singerman, 99).

Themes and Metaphors

High society is a major theme of this movie. The rules of high society is absolute discretion and protecting appearances, even by lying. Robert was cheating on Christine and when she found out by seeing their last embrace she stopped caring for Robert because he embarrassed her. He did not keep his relationship in complete secret. Also the idea of the relationship between a man and woman is relevant throughout the movie. Christine and Robert have many relationships with each other then with others, while even the servants are having relations with each other. This might be implying that love is universal and it is not just subject to high society. Christine makes a declaration in the movie where she announces “I am sick of this theater, Octave!” This is a metaphor that might means that she is tired of putting on a show and hiding so many secrets just so she does not become the center of gossip (Singerman, 105).

Style

Renoir shoots this film in deep focus to make everything dramatic. He liberates the actors to develop their characters freely. He uses pans and tracking shots to make the audience able to see the characters movements and to make editing the film easier. We can also see many striking sequence shots which shows the whole group and where they are (Singerman, 107).

One question that was asked to Jean Renoir was…
“What exactly will The Rules of the Game be?”
“A precise description of the bourgeois people of our times. I want to demonstrate that for every game there are rules. If you don’t follow the rules, you lose.”

(Singerman, 109)

Works Cited

Singerman, Alan. French Cinema The Student's Book. English Edition. Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2006.

What to expect from this blog

If anyone reads this that is not in the French New Wave Cinema class you will probably enjoy this because I will review a series of movies that I suspect will be very interesting.
Sarah V.