Jacques Tati

Mon oncle

Mon oncle

Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law, and in the antiseptic plastic hose factory where he gets a job. The second Hulot movie and Tati’s first color film, Mon oncle is a supremely amusing satire of mechanized living and consumer society that earned the director the Academy Award for best foreign-language film.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1958
  • 116 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.33:1
  • French
  • Spine #111

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Introduction by actor and comedian Terry Jones
  • My Uncle, director Jacques Tati’s 1958 reedited, English-language version of the film
  • Once Upon a Time . . . “Mon oncle,” an hour-long documentary from 2008 on the making of the film
  • Everything Is Beautiful, a three-part program from 2005 on the film’s fashion, architecture, and furniture design
  • Everything’s Connected, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet comparing Mon oncle to the other Monsieur Hulot films
  • “Le Hasard de Jacques Tati,” a 1977 French television episode featuring an interview with Tati about his dog, Hasard, and the canine stars of Mon oncle
  • New English subtitle translation

Available In

Collector's Set

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Complete Jacques Tati

Blu-ray Box Set

7 Discs

$99.96

Collector's Set

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Complete Jacques Tati

DVD Box Set

12 Discs

$99.96

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Introduction by actor and comedian Terry Jones
  • My Uncle, director Jacques Tati’s 1958 reedited, English-language version of the film
  • Once Upon a Time . . . “Mon oncle,” an hour-long documentary from 2008 on the making of the film
  • Everything Is Beautiful, a three-part program from 2005 on the film’s fashion, architecture, and furniture design
  • Everything’s Connected, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet comparing Mon oncle to the other Monsieur Hulot films
  • “Le Hasard de Jacques Tati,” a 1977 French television episode featuring an interview with Tati about his dog, Hasard, and the canine stars of Mon oncle
  • New English subtitle translation
Mon oncle
Cast
Jacques Tati
Monsieur Hulot
Jean-Pierre Zola
Monsieur Arpel
Adrienne Servantie
Madame Arpel
Lucien Frégis
Monsieur Pichard
Betty Schneider
Betty
J. F. Martial
Walter
Dominique Marie
Neighbor
Yvonne Arnaud
Georgette
Adélaïde Danieli
Madame Pichard
Alain Bécourt
Gerard Arpel
Régis Fontenay
Suspenders dealer
Claude Badolle
Flea market dealer
Max Martel
Drunken man
Nicolas Bataille
Working man
Credits
Director
Jacques Tati
Written by
Jacques Tati
With the collaboration of
Jacques Lagrange
With the collaboration of
Jean L’Hôte
Assistant directors
Henri Marquet
Assistant directors
Pierre Etaix
Cinematography
Jean Bourgoin
Editor
Suzanne Baron
Music
Frank Barcellini
Music
Alain Romans
Set design
Henri Schmitt
Executive producer
Louis Dolivet
Associate producer
Alain Térouanne
Consulting producer
Fred Orain

Current

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Tati’s witty visual comedy also functioned as satire of a rapidly modernizing postwar France.

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Jacques Tati: Composing in Sound and Image

What you hear is as crucial—and as funny—as what you see in Tati’s films.

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Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati

Though he emerged from established stage and screen comedy traditions, Tati invented a completely new filmic language.

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Some of you might have seen the news item on our website regarding the Jacques Tati “centennial-plus” and the exhibits around Paris paying homage to the inventive filmmaker. I had the good fortune to be in the City of Lights on official Criterion

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Explore

Jacques Tati

Writer, Actor, Director

Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati

It’s rare for a director’s physical appearance to be as iconic as Jacques Tati’s is. Not just the writer and director of a series of beloved French comedies—including M. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon oncle, Playtime, and Trafic—but their star, Tati embodied the befuddled, eternally umbrella-carrying and trench-coated Monsieur Hulot, perennially unable to adjust to a rapidly modernizing world, with empathy and a delightful comic precision. The latter trait was undoubtedly due to his early career as a mime in French music halls; when he switched to film, he adapted his penchant for mute comedy not only to his character but also to his directing style. There’s very little audible dialogue in Tati’s films, and their spare use of sound contributes to the overall sense they create of a forbidding, contemporary world in which Hulot feels adrift and superfluous. Add Tati’s brilliant knack for composition, expertise at choreographing deadpan slapstick, and grandiose vision (his 70 mm Playtime, one of the most expensive French productions in history to that point, bankrupted him), and you’ve got one of the most enjoyable, singular oeuvres in film.