MONSIEUR HULOT'S HOLIDAY

by Jean-Claude Carriere ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1959

Cinema enthusiasts have since Jacques Tati's Jour de Fete recognized him as a singular and subtle talent. And subtlety is the quality of his most famous character, Monsieur Hulot, the Quixotic figure of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday and My Uncle, Monsieur Hulot. Evasive, preoccupied, at once aristocratically graceful and hopelessly awkward, Monsieur Hulot is always comic, always noble. In this book, a Parisian bourgeois, bored by the routine of an endless summer vacation, becomes fascinated by the enigmatic Monsieur Hulot as he proceeds to turn the unimaginative resort community upside down. For the solitary M. Hulot, an ardent devotee of sports, a compulsive good samaritan, impeccably polite, is blissfully unaware of the baser climate in which his companions live and in his elaborate attempts to integrate creates a spectacle which is tragi-comic, a spectacle of which, being totally lacking in self consciousness, he is unaware. As an exigesis of the films or as an exigesis of the incongruities organized society places on the unique individual, this book has its rewards. And those readers who have marveled at Jacques Tati's invention on the screen will applaud Jean-Claude Carriere's success in arresting the mercurial hero in stationary print so that he can be scrutinized and fully savored.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crowell

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1959

Categories: FICTION