Retro Reel: Mon Oncle

Posted on Jan 21, 2008 By Melissa Holbrook Pierson

(Criterion Collection, 1958, 116 minutes) - add this title to your Netflix queue

We had Buster Keaton; France got Jacques Tati. Great prizes both. Tati created the marvelous character of Monsieur Hulot, a sort of idiot savant who was often oblivious to the modern world roistering about him but who clearly embodied a simple goodness (and a funny way with a bouncy walk).

Here, he wordlessly sends up the mindless bourgeoisie, in love with antiseptic modernism at the cost of all good sense. How do we know this? Well, as the "fun" uncle who lives alone and happily jobless in a rooftop apartment, all the dogs of the town take to the streets in anticipation of his passage. Their joyful freedom--eating garbage, "watering" the park benches, exploring where their noses lead--is the kind exemplified by M. Hulot. His nephew, imprisoned in the cheerless machine of a house built by his persnickety parents, looks forward to jaunts with his uncle as the only form of childish fun he's likely to get.

Tati is a master of physical comedy, and he uses sound and sight gags to delirious effect. He choreographs a flow of delightful vignettes--the one in which a dog comes face to face with a dead fish at the market is alone worth the price of admission--with recurrent motifs like a punctuation. Hence the dogs appear, do their comedic turns, and leave, in order that Tati can again take the stage and tweak the notion of the well-ordered life. He seems to say, a life without the chaos of dogs is a lifeless one indeed.