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The film franchise in question has been dubbed the Monsieur Hulot series, named after the character (played by Tati himself) who appeared in all four movies. The first of the bunch is “Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot” (“Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday”), released in 1953, and it was followed by “Mon Oncle” (“My Uncle”), “Playtime,” and “Traffic,” the last of which debuted in 1971.
A French satirical comedy about a man on a beach vacation (though the man, Monsieur Hulot, is not at all central to much of the action), “Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot” used sound, comedy, visuals, and cinematic serendipity in ways that felt novel to moviegoers, and positioned all of it around a new sort of “silent” film hero.
“In the surrogate character of the sweet and bumbling, eternally umbrella-toting and pipe-smoking Monsieur Hulot, Tati invented a charming symbol of humanity lost in a relentlessly modernizing modern age,” Criterion writes of the Hulot films. The first movie in the series earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay (which real ones know is often the only nod the best movies of the year get from the Academy), was honored at Cannes, was once declared a “huge international success” by Roger Ebert, and caught the attention of zeitgeist-shaping film magazine “Cahiers du Cinéma.”
Its follow-up was arguably even more successful. “Mon Oncle,” which introduces Hulot’s nephew, was a box office hit (according to JP Box Office), and it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Jury Special Prize at Cannes. “Playtime,” a sprawling, ambitious 70mm comedy released in 1967, didn’t match the financial success of its predecessors, but it’s considered Tati’s magnum opus by many. The movie took the 23rd spot on Sight & Sound’s list of the best movies of all time in 2022, beating out classics like “Psycho,” “Do The Right Thing,” and “Some Like It Hot” in the expansive decennial list voted on by critics, filmmakers, curators, and more. In keeping with his trend of satirizing modern times, the final film to feature Hulot, “Traffic,” reimagined him as an auto factory worker.
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