MovieChat Forums > Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1954) Discussion > My favorite scene (strolling man at the ...

My favorite scene (strolling man at the window) Spoilers

posted 9 years ago by liching1
4 replies | jump to latest

I like when the the strolling man and his wife go by the window of the masked ball and the man chances to look in and sees Hulot dancing with Martine and this man who has shown himself in the movie to be clearly world-weary all the way up till now suddenly breaks a smile and then walks on for a few steps to catch up with his wife but then quickly comes back for one last look ----and he smiles again. It's not a smile of derision or anything negative ----for lack of a better word it seems to be joyful.

[–] virgiltx 8 years ago

The masked ball is my favorite scene, so maybe he and I have something in common. But I have a question, and I do not have a DVD to check with: Wasn't the masked ball upstairs to the lobby? Was the hotel split level?

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[–] rimnod 8 years ago

The Masked Ball was upstairs from the lobby. In fact the masked ball area overlooked the lobby from above. You can see the girl first walk into the masked ball and when she sees that hardly anyone is there she walks over and looks down to the lobby.

I am not sure if the masked ball area doubles as the dining room.

[–] virgiltx 8 years ago

So the question is, how could the old man be looking in the window on the ballroom from outside? There would need to be a ground incline to a higher location to his walkway. Or is his looking in the window a movie cheat?

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[–] virgiltx 8 years ago

On further study, the ballroom almost positively doubled as the restaurant:
http://images.popmatters.com/misc_art/t/tati-monsieur-hulots-holiday.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4BmWtRhvKqfwY2B1tlLBFH3_OQ5Qtc303xHL0Rli_qu2jW7o3gQ

Martine entered from the far side doorway, and went to look down on the lobby on the opposite side of the ballroom. That view, as I recall, put the lobby entrance at a right angle to the ballroom entrance, and the door she was looking through. She would have been coming from across the street. And we know there was an incline down to the lobby entrance.

But I'm still confused about the location of the man looking in the window. It seems it would be on the side that Martine entered, through either the entrance or one of the windows, but was that all the way out on the street behind?

Also, where were the stairs that the toddler climbed up with the ice cream cones?
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The story is king.