Tickets - £10 Available here
Tickets will also be available from the Customer First Center, Whitley Bay from 30 July
Tickets - £10 Available here
Tickets will also be available from the Customer First Center, Whitley Bay from 30 July
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot
(Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday) (1953)
Introducing Monsieur Hulot, a charming, pipe smoking, bumbling chaos generator who stumbles through his French seaside holiday. Mishaps and misunderstandings abound, and hilarity ensues! Writer/director/actor, Jacques Tati, chose a busy seaside hotel and resort on a curve of golden sand within a sheltered bay for this award-winning movie’s main action. Filmed at Saint Marc Sur Mer in the summer of 1951, still in the shadow of the Second World War, Tati chose the location as it epitomised nostalgia for pre-war, childhood seaside holidays. All of the ageless, iconic elements of beach vacations feature in Hulot’s comic rampage, fishing boats and beach sports, holidaymakers and hotel etiquette. The film was nominated for Best Story and Screenplay at the 1956 Oscars, gathering other prestigious awards and recognition as one of the most loved films of all time.With a jazz score, the film is built around a series of sight gags, but is far from a silent movie, featuring background noises, speech, and sound effects. Yet, comic as it is, the film also captures, in the ordinary play of holiday folk, a time, a mood, an emotional power, which resonates today.
With an introduction to the film by Vin Arthey We are delighted that author, and researcher Vin will introduce our screening of the film, but what possible connection could the biographer of Willie Fisher/Rudolf Abel, Kremlin spy, have to Monsieur Hulot? Picture this – a moody night in coldest 1955 Paris, Harry Lime’s theme plays from a smoke-filled café. There’s a mysterious figure, collar turned up – of course. He stops under a lamp post to light a cigarette – inevitably. Through narrowed eyes – naturally, he notices the poster for a film showing at a local cinema. Passing through on his only leave from his spy mission in the US (from 1947 to 1957) to the home of his Russian KGB spymasters, the mysterious figure is Willie Fisher, alias Rudolf Abel. And the film he sees in Paris is, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.Arriving in Moscow Abel/Fisher meets up with his friend Kyrill and can’t stop talking about the film, but why? What possible connection can there be to explain his enduring love of the film? While researching his book ‘Abel The True Story of the Spy they Traded for Gary Powers’, Vin began to see the film through the eyes of the spy. He will introduce a short film on Willie Fisher, shedding light on the mystery and the complex connections between the spy, the film, Cullercoats and its Watch House.
When: Saturday 20th September
Doors open 2.30pm
Event starts 3.00pm
Where: Cullercoats Watch House,
Front St, Cullercoats, NE30 4QB
This event has happened.
Ticket sales from this event will go towards the Cullercoats Watch House restoration fund.
Special thanks to Julia Vickers for
sponsoring this event.
