{"id":4888,"date":"2026-09-29T15:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T21:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4888"},"modified":"2026-09-14T12:13:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T18:13:52","slug":"movie-mon-oncle-1958","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/29\/movie-mon-oncle-1958\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Mon Oncle (1958)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MonMon Oncle
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1958
\nRating: Not Rated
\nLength: 116 minutes \/ 1.93 hours<\/p>\n

One tragedy of the end of the era of silent comedies of the 1930s is that few have taken on that mantle in the modern era. The closest we get is something like Mon Oncle<\/em> (1958), a French film by Jacques Tati that pokes fun at \u201cmodern\u201d technologies and avant-garde art with very little dialogue. It\u2019s basically slapstick that makes fun of the conveniences that get in the way more than they help automate everyday life. That it feels applicable even today is a testament to its critique of \u201cthe next big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film follows M. Hulot (Jacques Tati) as he visits his nephew and has to endure the geometric and impractical design choices of the nephew\u2019s family. The entire lifestyle is shown to be performative and is as far from the comfort that Hulot experiences in his cozy city apartment. Still, Hulot is offered a job at a factory which exhibits many of the same issues the modern house has. While not actively clumsy, the semi-bumbling and unconcerned nature of Hulot is central to this film\u2019s comedy. You don\u2019t even need to understand French to get the visual gags throughout.<\/p>\n

My only qualm with Mon Oncle<\/em> is that the pacing feels a little slow. Most gags are set up and take forever to execute, and others seem to go on a little too long, or at least longer than they are actively funny. Granted, this is likely because of the era when this film was made compared to the somewhat snappier comedy of recent movies. This still doesn\u2019t negate the clever message that it gets across: when working with design, function must come before form. That we still need this reminder almost 70 years later says something.<\/p>\n

A clever, silent slapstick film that hearkens back to the classics, I give Mon Oncle<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

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Mon Oncle Year: 1958 Rating: Not Rated Length: 116 minutes \/ 1.93 hours One tragedy of the end of the era of silent comedies of the 1930s is that few have taken on that mantle in the modern era. The closest we get is something like Mon Oncle (1958), a French film by Jacques Tati […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,382,2],"tags":[2105,94,4657,4658,4661,4656,13,8,76,4659,4660],"class_list":["post-4888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-foreign","category-movie","tag-2105","tag-french","tag-jacques-tati","tag-m-hulot","tag-modernism","tag-mon-oncle","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-satire","tag-silent-comedy","tag-slapstick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4888"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4897,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888\/revisions\/4897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}