Mon Oncle, Monsieur Hulot

Mon Oncle was Jacques Tati's first colour film and as the  title indicates features his Chaplinesque alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, a loose-limbed, indefatigably good-natured chap whose blithe existence might have been the model for Mr Magoo.

The film is too long but nevertheless is a smartly-devised visual satire of the 1950's Jetsons-like ideal of contemporary chic and the high modernist Le Corbusierian vision of the house as "a machine for living", a moral imperative far removed from Hulot's own ramshackle life in old Paree with which it is unfavourably compared.

The film, which is a must for anyone into the era's idea of interior style, won the 1958 Special Jury Prize at Cannes and the 1959 Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

 

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