What are those garden decorations that Hulot helps break with this nephew? A friend suggested that they looked like Hannukah chandeliers... which made me think that there might be some subtle association between bourgeois and capitalist values with Jewish ones... a bit odd considering this is a postwar (although conservative), 1950s, French movie... but anyway, does anyone know anything about this?
Thanks!
Pb.
The scene has nothing to do with chandeliers (Hannukah or otherwise). The trees you see in the film are 'espaliered trees'; it is an horticultural practice which consists in pruning fruit trees like apple trees in order to get some big fruits even in a small garden. In 'Mon oncle', it emphasizes the artificiality of the Arpel 'estate': intead of letting the fruit trees grow freely, they are elaborately and painstainkingly pruned and guided. It takes at least three years to obtain the kind of tree design that you see in the film. Initially the tree has to be grafted on a special rootstock that will prevent the tree from growing too much. These espaliered trees follow established pattern depending on the type of fruit. For apple or pear trees, there are classical designs like the 'simple U' (two branches coming from the grafted bough are allowed to grow in parallel), the double U (that is UU); another one corresponds apparently to the trees shown in the film: it is a small u inside a big U (instead of 2 U side by side, you have a big U and between the branches of this big U is grown a smaller U form).
At some point in the film, Mrs Arpel is outside and exclaims: "oh! a leaf!" as if it were both surprising and annoying to see a leaf in a garden. From her point of view, it is annoying because it means nature invading her territory.
By the way, at least two Jewish persons contributed to Mon Oncle; they wrote the music of the film: Alain Romans and Norbert Glanzberg. Glansberg is not credited with the music because the score he wrote initially for the film was changed into a song for Edith Piaf: a very famous song called 'Mon manège à moi'; if you find this song on the internet (it is also known as 'tu me fais tourner la tête); you will hear that the music is very similar to the main musical theme of Mon Oncle. .
Even though it's 2 ywars after the post, have to ad...Are you freakin' SERIOUS? The movie has nothing to do with anti-semitism.
shareThose are not menorahs. Those trees are espaliered. They are tied up and smashed against the wall and forced to grow flat. It is extremely artificial, turning a three-dimensional living thing into a two-dimensional ornament. Originally it was done to fruit trees to force them to grow more fruit.
Well, you can see how it fits into the overall theme.
Well, the city's being built and I'm winning this game. So don't interrupt us with trifles.