If holidays are about anything, it's relaxing and having some fun - few films capture this light-hearted and playful mood quite so well as Jacques Tati's masterfully orchestrated comedy Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. Jacques Tati's brand of comedy was a continuation of the silent comedians of old - Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd - with the added twist of sound throw into the mix to add texture not through dialogue (characters often speak in deliberately indiscernible mumbles) but with the use of sound effects to act as punchlines. The seaside setting in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday provides Tati with all the material he needs for an endless stream of inventive visual gags, often lampooning caricatures of social types. It's hard not to watch this with a smile fixed to your face.
