my new blog the silver age of film

It's a place to put all my film reviews but a friend, James B. from my boards will being putting up his own reviews and Ill be doing new one's. The Silver Age of Film

The Greatest Film Ever: The Seventh Seal

knight (Max Von Sydow) playing chess with death
film fest friday
foundChivalry Now

The Seventh Seal



Bergman's "the Seventh Seal" is not only my favorite film of all time, but is considered by many critics (real critics) to be the best film ever made. It's deceptive becuase it looks like a home movie. It's as stagy as a high school senior play. Looking at still shots from it one could easily believe it was a freshman college troupe, the film grainy and the production is cheap. Yet beneath this homespun facade lies one of the most sophisticated films in history. "The Seventh Seal" is a profound film about humanities existential dilemma, our search for God and meaning, and our black moments of despair when we project onto the universe an eschaton of our own making.

The film was not Bergman's big break out. That was in 1955 with "Smiles of a Summer Night." Before that he was a famous stage director and as a film maker he was known as one of Sweden's "angry young men." No one knew quite what they were angry about but they were angry. His films before that point lack the poignancy and universal importance quality of his major films.He hit his stride with "Smiles of a Summer Night." "The Seventh Seal" was his next big important film, it confirmed that "Smiles..." was not a fluck and it went further in conveying his reputation. "Smiles.." had all of Europe talking about him, "The Seventh Seal" had the world talking about him.

The following is taken from the script where the knight mistakenly thinks he is confessing to a priest, but it is Death who is listening. It expresses the existential struggle of this knight searching for truth.

Both the dialogue and the synopsis below are from the link I link to below "Chivalry Now"

Synopsis:

A knight tries to pray along the seaside, but is unable to. He is troubled by the requirements of faith. Although he has gone to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusade for God, all he saw there was death and injustice, and men of twisted faith. He asks himself, "where is God? What is the meaning of existence without Him? Where can I find any sense to life?" He is an idealist who is troubled. He is no longer set in the ideals given to him, but questions everything to find a greater truth. What troubled him most is that there seems to be no idealized truth to grasp onto, and this leaves him searching in despair.
The squire is more down to earth, the disenchanted intellectual who demands that everyone else see the world from his disenchantment. He has not only lost his ideals (if he ever had them), but lost the desire to find something greater than what he sees. He is the existentialist. Basically he resents his station, that of serving the more idealistic knight.

Death accepts the challenge of playing the game of chess, giving the knight a chance to continue search for God, and dedicate his life to doing one good act. One wonders if we are not all playing chess with Death, postponing the inevitable, which might be waiting for us around the next corner.

The married couple, the actors, represent a healthy relationship, despite their obvious hardships. They love each other, and their son. The father tells his wife that their son will be a great acrobat, that he will accomplish the incredible (keeping the ball suspended in mid-air). He then explains that the trick would be impossible for him or his wife, but not necessarily for Mikael. In this statement, he expresses hope for the future, and disavows limitations on the next generation. There is a simple idealism expressed in this. We live and then we die, allowing evolution to produce something better. We should facilitate this process. That the actor sees visions suggests that he is in tune with his own mystical experiences, which transcends the rituals of religion.

The squire has great disrespect for priests, whom he sees as taking advantage of common people, using fear as a tool. He degrades those religious idealists who created the idea of a Holy Crusade. The thought of religious fanatics beating themselves out of repentance frightens him.

The man who steals from the dead was previously a student of theology who proselytized going to the Crusade. He is now a thief, and attempts to rape the woman who discovers his treachery. The squire believes that this is the natural progression of religious leaders. The man belittles and threatens the actor, hating him for his simple authenticity. He later dies of the plague.

The burning of the witch demonstrates how our belief in God and angels and the devil are ultimately based on nothing we can see or touch. There is life, and there is death. The witch who believes in the devil is obviously insane. Are the priests who condemn her, and the soldiers who kill her much different? The knight experiences anguish at her death, as the squire points out that only emptiness awaits her.
The actor who has the affair with the blacksmith's wife feigns his own death. Before stabbing himself with the fake knife, he states that he will leave the unreality of his life, and take on the reality of a corpse. This is a powerful statement of existential thought. The living person is not static; he is always creating himself, with every choice and direction that he takes. This is likened to "unreality." The dead corpse is, in comparison, a fixed object, without conscious potential. It's reality does not change. It is dead, not alive.

The knight distracts Death long enough for the married couple to escape. This is his good deed, and the answer to what he was looking for. Our purpose is to preserve life for the future. Other than that, we cannot be sure of anything. Even Death seems pleased by the knight's pleasure. The knight asks Death for what he knows about the mysteries of life. Death can tell him nothing. It appears that Death is more of a reality than God.

The ending is very interesting. Everyone dies, except for the couple and their baby, who have escaped. The knight begs his unseen God for mercy, while the squire complains that he is wasting his breath. They both die, but who is the one who contributed the most to life? It is the discouraged idealist who seeks for truth. His life had more meaning in that he saved the lives of others

That's a fine summary of the film except that there's a lot more to be said about it. There's a sense of panic in the society, everything is in state of crisis, civilization is crumbling it may be the end of the world. The pleauge is everywhere. The synopsis I quoted from implies that Death is consenting to play chess in an unusual move. Actually in the film Death says "I never lose." He plays all the time. We are all playing chess with death. most of us are not as good at forestalling the inevitable as was the Knight Antonius Bloch. But We all try it. We all fail. We will all die, the state of panic and crisis and the end of times is just the on going state of mortality. So given that our time is short, what it's all about? That's what the film is about. The little acrobat and his family are the hippies. They are romantically delusional enough and in love with art and with each other to be satisfied with their little corner and their little tricks and their mystical visions. They believe the Virgin Mary is tripping around near by (we see her in the background a couple of times). Most of us want more assurance than that. Some don't care they content themselves with party time, there is a character in the film like that. As Dlyan's Joker says to the Thief  "this is not our fate." Bloch dies, we are not sure he got his answer but he sought it. The point of film seems to be that the answer is not in the finding of an answer but in the seeking for it.

Bergmann was an atheist, the son of a minister and Chaplin to the King of Sweden. He produced a huge body of works in the 50's and 60's and set the tone for films in that decade and beyond. In such films as "Hour of the Wolf," "The seventh Seal," "Wild Strawberries," "Virgin Spring," "Crys and whispers," Bergmann wrestled with the oceanic topics of life, aunxt, meaning, the existence of God, the anxiety of being human.

watching those films makes up some of the happiest memories of my youth. For me he will always be the symbol of the greatness of art, the discovery of life, and the search for ultimate meaning.My two favorite films of all time are Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. The only other director I place on the same level is Kurosawa.

Bergman is one of the finest examples of the style of atheism into which I fitted when I was young. Searching, pondering the great questions, an existentialist who is never satisfied with conventional answers. The thing about Bergman as an atheist is that he's the diametrical opposite of Dawkins.  Bergman deals with religion with great respect. Even when he mocks religion he's not mocking the people for believing it, and he never makes a mockery of the search.He's still searching himself. He's like someone saying "If you find anything I would still like to know, but I don't think you are going to." He doesn't handle religion with kid gloves, its obvious he thought most of it was nonsense, but he never degrades the sense of wonder at the holy or the luminosity or realization of our need to seek the ultimate.

"The Seventh Seal" has all of these features. Nothing is more of a slap in the face to blind obedience and unthinking conformity of the religious history of the West than Bergman's scenes such as, burning the girl at the steak, and the girl who has faith Satan will save her suddenly realizes "there's no body there to save me and I'm going to die now." The superstition of the guy smearing the blood and bile of a black dog on the walls to keep the plague away. These are stinging rebuttals to traditional organized religion. The Circus performers, especially the husband, child-like and innocent, happy, only concerned with the happiness of his family and his art, represent those for whom faith is real. The husband sees the Virgin Mary everywhere and at times we see her tripping by in the background while no one else notices.

The sincere seeker is never berated by Bergman, but human frailty is never masked. The old actor is always seeking other men's wives to court, the young woodman's wife is never faithful, the three are always seeking to do each other harm. Yet at the same time this mockery, it's a fares.

The Knight is a seeker but he's also afraid. He seeks certainty. He's not seeking the infinite or the divine necessarily but certainty as to what's true. He confesses this to one whom he takes for a priest but it's really death in disguise. This is how death learns the combination of knight and bishop he's been uses and then beats him. The confession made to death is about his need for certainty and his fear of not finding it. So death is saying in a sense, "I'm the only certainty, and you only find it after you come with me."

Here's an excerpt of the confession to death, on Chivalry Now.

ANTONIUS: I want to confess, as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face, and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.

DEATH: Yet you do not want to die.

ANTONIUS: Yes I do.

DEATH: What are you waiting for?

ANTONIUS: Knowledge.

DEATH: You want a guarantee?


ANTONIUS: Call it what you will. Is it so hard to conceive of God with one's senses? Why must He hide in a mist of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe, but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart. But He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me. But He is silent. I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.


DEATH: Perhaps there is no one there.

ANTONIUS: Then life is a senseless terror. No man can live with Death and know that everything is [for] nothing.

DEATH: Most people think neither of Death nor nothingness.

ANTONIUS: Until they stand on the edge of life, and see the Darkness.

Bergman is an odd mixture, he was cutting edge sixties rebel in the arts, worldly, sophisticated, atheist, intellectual. Yet he was sensitive to the search for God and the desire to find truth. His films are paradoxical as well. The film is a combination of Mel Brooks camp humor, with high school play where the drama teacher has made the production very stagy and it's all shot on home movie. There are times when the production seems so rough you can swear it is a home movie. Then you go to the coffee shop after and talk about the existence of God for three hours because you realize you have seen a great film and it has transported you into the search. His films are also paradoxical as he was, they convey this greatness. To appear so cheap and amateur to leave one with the sense of having seen a truly great work of art it has to be truly great.


The major Characters dance over the hill with death, they all die of the plague but all we see is they meat death, then they all dance away with him. They are spied by the only survives of the traveling companions, the hippie-like performers and their young son, who watch them dance over the horizon into eternity.


1958 trailer for the Seventh Seal

Wild Strawberries: Review of Film by Ingmar Bergman

Borg with three students


Derek Malcolm, writing for the Guardian UK (Thursday 10 June 1999 19.36 BST )

It is said, with some truth, that there are three major film-makers who empty cinemas these days: Bergman, Godard and Chaplin. In Bergman's case, it is almost certainly because the 'gloomy Swede' tag has taken root. There's just enough truth in the travesty to allow one to sympathise. After all, didn't he envisage God as a spider in Through A Glass Darkly? But he also made one of the most subtle of Mozartian romantic comedies in Smiles Of A Summer Night, and Fanny and Alexander, his last major film, could hardly be called depressing.
The film I constantly go back to, however, is Wild Strawberries (1957), which, while scarcely a bag of laughs, has a compassionate view of life that best illustrates the more optimistic side of Bergman's puzzled humanity.

That's a real shame that these there great geniuses of film are so brilliant the brunt of the audience can't take their films. That's is a truly disturbing  commentary, not upon those filmmakers but upon our society. I do agree with Malcolm about "Wild strawberries." (Smultronstalliet)I go back to it again and again. In fact I give the very top spot as my favorite film of all times bar none, to two films equally loved, both by Bergman, "The Seventh Seal," and this one. It is not a bag of laughs but it does have a side of humor and though its about an old man at the end of his life it has a hopeful tone that looks to the future. It's not a heavy theologically oriented film but it even has it's God-conscious side. Bergman, though an atheist, could not let go of the idea of God, it has too many cogent connections to art and thought and life.

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

	Victor Sjöström	...	Dr. Isak Borg
	Bibi Andersson	...	Sara
	Ingrid Thulin	...	Marianne Borg
	Gunnar Björnstrand	...	Dr. Evald Borg
	Jullan Kindahl	...	Agda
	Folke Sundquist	...	Anders
	Björn Bjelfvenstam	...	Viktor
	Naima Wifstrand	...	Mrs. Borg, Isak's Mother
	Gunnel Broström	...	Mrs. Alman
	Gertrud Fridh	...	Karin Borg, Isak's wife
	Sif Ruud	...	Aunt Olga
	Gunnar Sjöberg	...	Sten Alman / The Examiner
	Max von Sydow	...	Henrik Åkerman
	Åke Fridell	...	Karin's lover
	Yngve Nordwall	...	Uncle Aron

See more »

Realesed in 1957 This was one of Bergman's earliest successes, just on the heels of his original break out film, "Smiles of a Summer Night." The film centers around an old man,

Victor Sjöström ... Dr. Isak Borg who is at the end of his life, he's a great immanent medical researcher, still admired and loved by the populace he once tended as a country doctor, about to receive an honorary degree form a major university to crown his life time achievements. He is a crotchety old man who hides guilt, anger and aggression behind a vernier of old world charm. He has a old married couple sort of relationship with his manipulative managing house keeper, who wheedles and flatters him as she dotes on his greatness and practically worships him, but treats him like a child to do what's best for him. He has a bad relationship with his son,(Gunar Björnstrand) Dr. Evald Borg dividing over a loan he gave his son years ago and has never been paid back, the father doesn't have the grace to forgive the debt, spouting all sorts of pious nonsense about responsibility and morality. the son is middle ages, the father is almost 80 and the debt still divides them. It was Bjornstrand who stared in "Winter Light."

The old Doctor decides to drive to the University, to the alarm of his Housekeeper. But his doubter in law (Marriane Borg), played by Ingrid Thulin, just happens to be staying with him. She's left her husband but asks for a ride with him to the university, where she lived with her husband. So this film is a road trip with an old man and his daughter-in-law. An American film would pit Steve Martin and Jeniffer Lopez and they would talk about nothing and wind up destroying buildings having car chases. In this film, however, these two literally do nothing more than talk about what I'm sure appears to be "nothing" to most Americans, but actually invovles the most important things in life. The old man has had a disturbing dream, but the young woman doesn't want to hear it. She frankly tells him she doesn't like him because he hides cruelty behind his mask of old world charm, yet the two remain good natured. The dream was about the man walking down empty streets of a small European village. A hearse driven by horses dumps a coffin and a hand falls out of the ajar lid. The man goes near, the hand grabs him and pulls him close, the face peers out from the coffin, it's him! The man is dead and in his coffin and pulling himself toward the coffin.

The two stop to examine a house on a lake where the old man spent many a happy summer as a child. The house is deserted and not owned by the family anymore, but the two wander about for a while looking. Sitting by himself the old man suddenly sees the house as it was and his brothers and sisters, children in old fashioned turn of the century clothes, run out of the house pursuing all manner of summer activities. He watches a scene between his cousin Sara and his brother, who we learn latter married and were still living but old in this current time 0f 1957. Dr. Borg wanders into the house and stands observing scenes of family life but the characters don't see him. We learn from this that that he was afraid to act on his feelings, he loved Sara but let her marry his brother (presumably they were third cousins) because he was stand offish.

At this point they meet three young people who are hitch hiking to the University. The three are a hilarious trio, a theology student, a secular student of some kind who of course has it in for religion in the faddish way that students of the 60s hated everything established, and a girl who the two fight over the whole trip. They have a few little runs at discussing God. The Marxist student is shallow and con only think in Marxist cliches he doesn't see that the Doctor is trying to hint that God is too important and too grand a concept to dismiss outright. One of my favorite scenes in the film. he two students come to blows. They go off to fight in the woods. Their fighting looks like two beached whales trying to push off each other to get unbeached. They get back in the car, one has a black eye. The girl sits in the middle she turns to the theology student and says "so, does God exist?"

That kind of reminds me of my partcipation on message baords. Along their way after they meet the kids they almost have a wreck with a small VW bug. The married couple in the bug are friendly at first and happy to be saved and given a ride, willing to admit the almost wreck was their fault (their car winds up upside down but the Doctor's old car is fine). But the two can't stop fighting. Subtle at first then ridiculous. They wind up being put out of the car when the woman begins slapping the husband and has to be restrained by the kids because she can't stop hitting him.

While the fight was ensuing the old man and his daughter-in-law have had a very important discussion sitting in the car and he went to sleep and has the seminal dream of the film. The discussion revealed that the woman left the doctor's son because he's just like his father, cruel, demanding, cold, unfeeling. The woman is pregnant and wants the child the father categorically does not want children and refuses to continue the marriage if they have them. At a time when abortion was unthinkable in America these guys argue about that option as though they were discussing painting the din, because they are in Sweden. But the woman wants the child, she wants to have a family is going back to make one last hopeless stab and reconciling.

The dream that Dr. Borg has while asleep in the car has him ushered into the family summer house they had previously been to, but this time it was empty, dark and foreboding. The Doctor is ushered into the house by the husband who was put out of the car. In this dream, however, he's a proctor giving the old man a test as though he was again at university. Inside the family home is a long dark corridor that was not there before it leads to a very old fashioned looking lecture room in which the old man is given an examination as one might receive at University at the turn of the century. He has to look in a microscope and identify the specimen. He claims something is wrong with the microscope because all he can see looking in is his own eye. The Proctor says there's nothing wrong with it. Then he is to examine a  young woman and say what's wrong with her. He finds that the woman is dead, but she suddenly bursts into laughter. The Proctor tells him he's been found incompetent. He his then told that he has been charged with being guilty.  Grim looking students in the gallery watch and don't crack a smile despite the old man's attempts at humor. Finally he is lead to another room and when they go through the door they are outside.

He stands on the edge of a glad in which his wife (now long dead) and another man play little kissy games and make love. The wife talks about how she will tell him about her day, he will pretend not that he's angry and she's done wrong, but that she's to be pitied, she sick and made a mistake. She hates him totally and utterly for this high and mighty  attitude and his refusal to become angry even though she sleeps with other men. The Proctor observes that with most men who are gazing upon an image of their long dead wives, they have a fading image of a saintly woman, but this guy remembers vividly this this scene of adultery.

Despite this seeming nightmare the film ends on a hopeful note as the old man seems to have learned. As he tells Marianne "it's as though my mind is trying to tell me things I can't  face when I'm awake" The end of the film is hopeful and exudes a compassion toward the old man, human frailty in general and the young. The three students wind up as friends cheering him on and as they say good by they makes statements about how proud they are to know him. They keep popping up around corners even the ceremony for the award begins. "Wild Strawberries" is about a man facing himself, like the emblematic image of his own eye looking back at him in the microscope. He's forced to realize that he's allowed himself to be cut off from people and feelings to languish in guilt and for this reason does not forgive the debts of others. In the end the plunges into dream land where he is again in the summer house of his childhood surrounded by those he loved. In the first nostalgic sequence he could no find his parents, in this one he is reunited with them and though he's an old man  they see him this time and they do not see anything strange that he's old, he fits right in as he should.

Jacques Tati: Not the French Chaplan but the Ingamar Bergman of Comedy

Tati as Hulot: I am convinced that he was
the model for Inspector Clouseau. The above picture
In front of the "mos French Looking house" form Mon Oncle.

Part of the mission of this blog is intellectual reflection upon life as well as faith. The appreciation of Great art counts in that endeavor, and if the great art makes you laugh so much the better for Sunday, the day of rest. Toward that end I sometimes do little film reviews, always of old art films from the golden age of artistic cinema. Recently (in the past couple of years) I have really come to appreciate the great French filmmaker Jacques Tati (Oct 9, 1907--Nov 5, 1982). American film critics always call him "the French Chaplin." That is a dismissive injustice. He was a brilliant filmmaker who deserves to be thought of as the Bergman of Comedy.

I heard of this guy a long time ago. I even saw some of his early shorts. I thought "Ha, ha they are ok but he's no Chaplin." Not to insult the actual Chaplin, who was a great filmmaker in his own right. Chaplin himself is so much more than just "ha ha the little clown fell down." Some of those early shorts of Tati were much like the little clown of Chaplin, both were excellent in their own rights. They should not to be compared to each other, and neither should limit the greatness of either filmmaker. Beyond the dismissive nature of American film critics, let's have no more comparisons with Chaplin. Why do I mean by the "Bergman of Comedy?" Ingamar Bergman is my favorite filmmaker and in my view the greatest and most brilliant filmmaker of all time. Many Critics bleieve that his film The Seventh Seal (1957) was the greatest film ever made. I have to admit I agree, even though it's hard to choose just one. One can find several of his films reviewed on my film review page.

Tati is better compared to Bergman because his films are not so "ha ha" funny like the little clown falling down, but more a brilliant, humorous, positive, sometimes painful (so much so one must laugh) glimpse into the rich pageantry of life. They are the kind of "zen" humor at which the French excel; the unfunny made humors, the subtle mixture of the absurd and the painfully acute. His early shorts made in the silent era and early talkies were the typical funny slap stick sort of fare. My first real exposure to his full length films was to Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953), (aka Mr. Hulot's Holiday). It does have some slap sticky shtick (business) going for it. It's packed with the sort rye subtle eye opening "ah, yes, that little aspect of life" epiphany that just breaks over you like an ocean breeze and fills you with longing for summer in childhood. It's one after another.

Mr. Hulot, who Tati always plays, is his signature character, going on holiday in the summer in the north of France. I think it's in Normandy which not the vacation capital of Eruope. This would be like wanting to go to the Meditation and staying at Faulty Towers instead. The tone is set by the most wonderful background music which is progressive jazz. It's a very mellow sort of Jazz that was new, sophisticated and somewhat progressive in the 50s. It's black and white, giving it a dream like quality of a childhood memory.The pervading sense of the film is one of happy optimism punctuated by the ruined surprise, the spit take, the cake in the face sort of thing. There's a small child who is given money to get ice cream for himself and his bother, he guys two cones. This two fisted ice cream eater realizes the cones are dripping all over his hands, he can't open the door to the hall where his brother is because he can't set the cones down. He's n quandary, he milks it for the humor then the kid eats both. Not a car chase, not an explosion, it's not the stooges but it's humorous and it makes you smile. Moreover there's another coming in about a minute. Hulot opens the door to the eating hall and the wind of the sea blows over a bunch of stuff people were cleaning up and so for ages. There's a bit with wet foot prints that never seem to go anywhere. There's a record player connected to the lights and it's real loud and this guy keep's playing it all night. There's a super funny scene where Hulto is knowing stuff off the wall while trying to look debonair to impress a woman. There's a grand finale fire works display where Tati gets into some priceless shtick with trying to put out the fire they cause and basically bombards the hotel and sets it on fire. Of course it was his clumsiness that started the fireworks shooting off inside a shed in the middle of the night. All the way through the film gives one a feeling being on holiday. I watched it eight times in a week the first time I saw it.

I think I like even better the film Mon Oncle (1958) (My Uncle). This film is in color and that's important because it has a modernity theme that would be belied by black and white. It begins with the construction of a sky scrapper on the outskirts of Paris. The names on placards in front of a building under construction usually tell the name of the firm and the architect and so on. We see the names we realize these are the credits of the film. But the title and the credit for producer and director (Tati of course) is scrawled in chalk on an old wall around the corner. So have two spheres here, the new gleaming factory district, with modern buildings, and the old quarter around the corner that still looks like something out of nineteenth century Paris. In fact there is a pack of stray dogs we follow in the opening of the film. This section of town is where Mr. Hulot lives and it's the most French looking place, it almost fits the stereotypical Hollywood image of 1901 in Paris. There are even horse drawn carts. There's one of those little markets where you can buy all sorts of fresh fish and veg and everything from street vendors. Kids playing in the street and so on. Hulot lives in the most French looking house I've ever seen. One would expect a sign that says "Jean Val Jean slept here." This is Hulot's turf. It is his domain. The shiny factory district around the corner is out of his world, He even rides a horse drawn cart. the dog pack is important because we are meant to understand that Hulto is one of the dogs, he's a straw, he's out of place, he's not rooted anymore. The old part is his turf but even there he's out place because he's out of the time in which he belongs.

Around the corner in the gleaming factory district is the house of his sister. He goes there every Sunday, I know what that's about. When I lived in New Mexico I went to my sister's and hung around on Sunday, not wanted there by my brother-in-law but just tolerated. I didn't have the money to go anywhere else, got a free meal talked to my sister. This is like Hulot in this film, he loves his nephew and his nephew loves him. He gives the child toys and picks him up after school and always finds interesting things to show him. The gang his nephew is in play this game where they hide on a hill over looking a street with lots of foot traffic and they wait until someone is coming they whistle the person runs into a sign in front of them becasue he's looking to see who whistled, they lay bets on who will hit the sign.

The sister lives in an ultra modern house. The house looks like a bank or a jack in the box form that era where they used square box like buildings. It has a high wall and electronic gate, filled with gadgets. the furniture doesn't look like furniture, nothing looks comfortable. they have a little fountain with a fish that spurts a stream of water out of its mouth and straight up. They turn it on when company comes. Everything buzzes in that house becasue everything is push button. When the mother is cooking there are so many buzzers going off you can't hear yourself think. The atmosphere is sterile. The child clearly hates it, this is one major thing driving him away form his father whom he can't stand to his uncle who the father hates. Of course the uncle, Hulot, mills about, if he takes a nape the father get's angry. Of course he falls asleep in the living room and is there on Monday morning . They decide to force Hulot to get a job. The father is the manager of the plant so he makes a job for him, and of cousre they all act it's a huge favor so me must take it. Of course he's about as suited to it as a pig would be to flying a bomber. The first day he let's the pack of straw dogs into he factory offices and they run amuck. Symbolism.The factory offices look like a bank. They are made in the style of fascist architecture: huge spaces that are way more than needed for the task they contain, big marble walls, cold and antiseptic and clunky out of proportion statues.


Sister's house


Hulot runs amuck. The factory makes rubber hoses and due to his general ineptitude for the job he makes a huge long string of hoses that look frankfurters. His friends try to hide the hose so he wont get fired, and they have lots of adventures trying to get it out of the plant unseen. Of cousre I'm skipping over a lot of hilarious stuff. Hulot damages the water line to the fountain in the sister's yard and it's spraying party guests. The father finally get's fed up with Hulot and trasfurs him to the provinces outside of Paris, far away, as a salesman. He's as suited to selling hoses as he is to making hoses. The brother can't make him go but because he's rootless and inept he does anyway. The son introduces the father to the bump-into-the-sing game and the father and son begin to move closer to each other. Lurking underneath his innocent state upon which Tati plays out his high jinks is a serious conflict between Paris as it is shaping up after the war and those who feel displaced by the new business orientation and who long for the old Paris, the Paris of great jazz, Josephine Baker, Picasso, and the lost generation. This is really not Tati's attempt to get to laugh at Mr. Hulot it's Tati's cometary on the faceless corporation the urge to do business in the American model, the loss of the elements that made Paris what it was before the war. This is interesting from the stand point of film because this was the time of the New Cinema when directors like François Truffaut were developing a new cinema. Yet Tati is not a throw back to pre war film making techniques. He's standing up for the individual and artistic integrity with a hint of nostalgia for a time when all of Paris reflected these ideals in everything, he's not doing it in an outmoded way.