It's July - But To Me It's Always April In Paris

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IN SEARCH OF MONSIEUR HULOT'S HOLIDAY

In 1953, my mother took me to see a French import film entitled Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, or Mr. Hulots Holiday. My thoughts at that time were never on France or even about visiting that country. But what happened that afternoon was to be the start of a life long love affair with France and everything French. Looking back on it, it was it turned out to be, one of the major highlights of my life. The film had almost no dialogue to speak of or if it did, I did not understand French, but what it did have was Jacques Tati', an truly gifted hilarious actor that had both my mother and I and the audience laughing for the entire time.
M. Tati to me and to others in France and worldwide ,he was a genius, he ambled aimlessly into French national consciousness and has remained there ever since. The little-known village he chose for the film's location became etched in people's minds as the quintessential holiday destination - a place where it was forever summer, the sky was forever blue, and the ice-cream van was forever overrun.
When ever I am feeling somewhat blue about the present time I live in, all I have to do is put on the DVD of that film and I am transported back to that theatre , the laughter and a gentler time – and somehow, everything is alright again.

Last year, while spending my vacation in the seaside resort of Le Baule, I noticed on a map I had, the village nearby called Saint Marc Sur mer. I was taken back, because wasn’t that the village where the movie was filmed? Indeed it was and so, I got into my car and drove over to this spot ( 15 minutes away) .
Saint Marc sur Mer, is a sleepy seaside resort on France's north-western coast. It was here that in the bumbling footsteps of one of the greatest comic characters in the history of cinema - a man who used the Great Summer Holiday as a vehicle for gentle satire and who had people rolling in the aisles while doing so, changed my life..

 Today, Saint Marc is still little more than a quiet seaside getaway, a genteel suburb of the nearest large town, Saint-Nazaire. Perched on the rugged coastline that continues down from western Brittany, it was plucked from obscurity by Tati because it had everything he needed: a little beach with a magnificent sea-view and a nearby hotel that ticked every box of the middle-class guest house. Days after his discovery, he wrote that, after weeks of searching, he had finally hit upon "the little corner I have been dreaming of".

Decades on, the Hotel de la Plage is now part of the Best Western chain but has managed, following a complete renovation last year, to avoid becoming entirely generic. The forward-leaning, pipe-smoking silhouette of its most famous guest decorates its walls, as do photographs taken during the filming in the summer of 1951. Even the bar stools feature different scenes from Hulot's adventures in Saint Marc. (Cheesy, yes. But no-one ever said M Hulot was the last word in chic.)


Despite the passing of almost 60 years, this stretch - now known officially as la Plage de M Hulot - is recognizably Tati-esque. Families lounge, their parasols up, hampers out and buckets and spades at the ready. Couples sprawl languidly. Toddlers tumble, ice-cream first, into the sand. The bronze of Hulot, surveying them all with the expression of a benevolent grandfather, looks on approvingly.
I parked my car and there it was, almost like it was back in the 1953 when I first saw the film. Nothing seemed to change. It was surreal, because as I walked around, I felt as if I was stepping into that film.

A local resident I meet while walking on the beach said to me, "Monsieur Hulot's holiday was the first film I ever saw in the cinema,". "It has come to be so symbolic” he said “ - of the first paid holidays, of holidays by the sea for ordinary people."
Wandering around Saint Marc during the day, I try to spot parts of the village used in the film. The cemetery which Hulot accidentally drove into- mid-funeral - is still there, though made rather less picturesque by the looming hulk of the thoroughly modern sports centre next door. I look in vain for the tennis courts where he unleashed his "unique" serve on unsuspecting guests; one man tells me he thinks they were concreted over and turned into a boules surface.
For those wishing to indulge in a little on-location 1950s nostalgia, a trip to the petite Jean Bart cinema down the road from the hotel is a Saint Marc must - especially when there is a nightly showing of the digitally restored re-release of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday,
During my visit, I passed families packing up their picnics and a collie dog cooling off in the Atlantic. Further on, two men, middle-aged and moustachioed, stand in great concentration at the edge of the ocean. They are trying to catch sea bass, they tell me. "We might be here for a while", they add, and the prospect doesn't seem to bother them………………………………………………. And I realize I have no need to watch a film to rediscover the 1950s. In St Marc, in the dying light of perfect summer days, the golden age lives on.

Happy Bastille Day - 2011

Secret Corners of Paris - Place des Victoires

            ( was just a few months ago)
After several weeks of work, where half of the Place des Victoires was totally hidden by scaffolding, they finally freed Louis the 14th (the guy on the horse in the middle!)! This place is one of the most beautiful ones in Paris for it's not too large, yet extremely spacious - and not too busy with car traffic ;-) For those of you who are into history, you should know that it was first inaugurated in March 1686 and that the law stated that only symmetrical buildings could be erected there.

                                             (now)