Jacques Tati’s final work, made for Swedish television, is one of the most poignant comedies in creation. Centered on a small, indoor circus performance and the audience in attendance, with rivulets of interactivity in either direction, Parade is a postmodern wonder—and a passing of the creative spirit from Tati, in his sixties, to two young children, a boy and a girl, who post-show venture backstage and attempt a few of the acts, and who (like other audience members) may have been a part of the show all along. Even the appearance of their mothers cannot resolve the slight though haunting ambiguity; these women also may have been “plants.” In a film where some audience members are blatant painted cardboard cut-outs, who can say where “performers” and “spectators” begin or end?
While the performance is underway, the stage is still under construction—except that that, too, is part of the show. A magician in the audience tries to outdo the magician onstage—except that all this is also part of the performance.
Everything turns to comedy. Someone seems to be playing a piano, but the “piano” turns out to be an illusionary prop that acrobats “attack” and tumble over. The comic-in-chief is Tati himself, who plays the “ringmaster.” In an especially beautiful bit, Tati mimes his half of a tennis match, sans racquet, ball or net, in slow motion—slow motion that he creates with his own body. The “parade” of performance comedy is passing Tati, and the rest of us, by. Look quickly! Don’t miss the flamenco dancers, the bucking mule, tributes to the late Edith Piaf and Harpo Marx, a Jack Benny-lookalike (as Benny appeared in Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, 1942) playing the violin and stepping on a fellow musician’s foot.
Posts Tagged ‘Tati’
PARADE (Jacques Tati, 1974)
September 8, 2009MON ONCLE (Jacques Tati, 1958)
June 5, 2009I like Jacques Tati a lot, along with his persona Monsieur Hulot, but I find My Uncle exceptionally annoying despite its Oscar, other best foreign-language film prizes from the New York critics and Spain’s film writers, and the best film prize from France’s film critics.
My Uncle finds M Hulot battling the impersonal, mechanized modern world and its infatuation with gadgetry and automated gizmos. His brother-in-law and sister, the Arpels, embody this infatuation, which makes their home an extension of the factory, which manufactures plastic products, that M Arpel directs and where he gets Hulot a job for a cold-blooded reason: to take somewhat away this uncle from the couple’s young son and thereby diminish his kind-hearted influence. Tati contrasts the Arpels’ sterile house, with its functional buzzing noises, and Hulot’s flat in a neighborhood that’s full of the noise of sociable humanity—a place that Hulot’s nephew loves to visit.
One scene is briefly hilarious: Hulot’s tackling his sister’s ultra-modern kitchen, where cupboards open and perilously snap shut seemingly on their own accord. Hulot drops a pitcher and is surprised to see it bounce. He expects the glass in his other hand to do the same when he drops it—but it really is made of glass and shatters!
But too much in the film, for me, simply isn’t funny enough. The Arpels are so grossly caricatured that I was grateful, and fleetingly touched, at their one heartfelt exchange on their way home from a concert they attend.
I am used to enjoying Hulot’s innocently, obliviously causing mischief; but here instead he is constantly being blamed for things he hasn’t done. This doesn’t appeal to me—although it doesn’t bother him, thank goodness.
Tati’s gracious silent performance allows Hulot to utter one word: “Fine.”
TRAFFIC (Jacques Tati, 1971)
November 25, 2008Jacques Tati’s final film finds Monsieur Hulot employed—surprisingly, as an automobile designer for Altra Motors. His camper is fitted with a dizzying variety of ingenious gadgets and features. Now its show model is headed for an international auto show in Amsterdam. Also making the trip, in their own cars, are Hulot and Altra’s public relations wiz, Maria, who is accompanied by her adorable fluffy dog. The transport is plagued by traffic and other impediments, including a detour to a police station. It hardly matters; Maria got the show’s opening date wrong, they are late, and Hulot will have to seek employment elsewhere.
One is prepared for disappointment. Trafic follows Tati’s masterpiece, Playtime (1967), the combined expense and financial failure of which bankrupt Tati. Given the brilliance of Playtime and the drubbing it took from critics upon its original release, one expects a shaken Tati not to be able to measure up. Indeed, Trafic is no Playtime; then what is? Trafic, however, is wonderful; it consistently amuses except for those moments when it explodes into hilarity, for instance, with the visual gag where it appears to Maria that her little dog has been crushed beneath the wheel of her own sports car. Moreover, there is in this film, as in the other, a precisely choreographed mise-en-scène, and even more so than in Playtime a dizzying variety of ingenious camera angles and distances (see above, if the language sounds familiar), all underscoring how the ascension of cars to the status of subject has increasingly rendered Western humanity their objects. This is a very funny film.
Tati, as always, is splendid as M. Hulot, and one of the film’s pleasures is to see how he has moderated the character’s innocence and obliviousness to accommodate poignantly Hulot’s advancing years.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati, 1967)
February 14, 2008On the loose in Paris, Monsieur Hulot must stay the night to roam the streets because the official he is supposed to meet is too busy to see him. Hulot’s delayed entrance gives advance hint of his invisibility when he appears since he is a silent figure in a sound film—well, at least a film that’s full of sounds. Percussive music accompanies the opening credits, while mellifluous music ironically accompanies the opening shot of Paris. The irony is doubled by the silence inside the airport terminal—except for the exaggerated sounds of people walking, including two nuns; one man’s shuffle sounds like a soft gallop. These everyday noises fix the alienated state of people, including their alienation from a modern urban environment overloaded with “thingamajigs.”
Suggesting a satirical fusion of Chaplin, Federico Fellini and Heironymous Bosch, Jacques Tati’s tribal Playtime may be the most detailed, visually intricate comedy in existence—disclosed almost entirely in long-shots, a “modern times” of glass walls, metallic gadgetry, and people at business and leisure (including a flock of American tourists herded from plane to hotel by bus), all befuddling Tati’s signature Hulot, whose pantomime and unfailingly polite air prevail, even when he is, understandably, mistaken for a door. Hulot maintains the fiction that he can remain himself in a world where no one is anyone any longer. Hulot isn’t one to “adapt”!
In Playtime’s summary image an obstinate glass door, given a good shake by Hulot, disintegrates. On a posh nightclub dance floor each couple acquits itself in its own style as part of a canvas of human frenzy rendered with documentary calm, which elevates the filmmaker’s vision to a phenomenon that is hilarious and, cumulatively, very moving.
Both glass and open night air expose Hulot’s vulnerability and our own.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (Jacques Tati, 1952)
January 8, 2010Jacques Tati introduced his signature character, Hulot, in Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, which won the Prix Louis Delluc and is surely one of the most fondly remembered film comedies of all time. Full of visual invention and wit, punctuated with hilarious slapstick, and warmly disposed to humanity, especially toddlers and children, it depicts Hulot’s seaside vacation in Brittany. The event is almost wholly unpleasant, and one imagines that all of Hulot’s holidays are similarly unpleasant, as are the holidays of all the world’s Hulots. But you know what fools we mortals be; once home, we declare what a good time we had, fall for the fiction ourselves, and try to revive the pleasure by repeating the event. Our vacations, you know, are a form of romance.
While others board a train for their holiday, loner Hulot travels in his rickety old car, which is armed for the occasion with a fishing pole and net; filmmaker Tati contrasts the sounds of both conveyances. This is a film of sparse dialogue, most of which exists on the fringes; but, because of the plentitude of sound effects, it is also a cacophonous film—in this regard, the equal of Dziga Vertov’s industrial Enthusiasm (1931), which Tati may indeed be parodying. (Or is Tati taking a swipe at Chaplin for his exaggerated championing of Vertov’s first sound film?) We hear lots of loud noises and sounds inside and about the seaside hotel where Hulot checks in, including from a radio, hotel guests and hotel staff—this last, a reminder that one soul’s vacation is another soul’s labor, that every breath we breathe is at somebody else’s expense.
Unlike Chaplin, Tati doesn’t hog his film; his Hulot is merely the slightly more prominent character in a dense complex of characters. Hulot is missing from whole vignettes. However, we are always glad when the camera finds its way back to him. One of Hulot’s key traits is his obliviousness to environment, his incapacity to see the calamitous things that he causes without meaning to, such as when he enters the hotel and leaves the door open, through which a wind blows in that upsets staff and guests. However, bad things also just happen to Hulot, such as when the tiny rowboat he is in on the water clamps shut around him like a mussel shell: my biggest movie laugh from childhood (Hulot is often childlike himself), in part precisely because we cannot see him through the pistachio nut shell-like slit. The image, beauteous, encapsulates Hulot’s impassivity—and it therefore implies a particular cosmic vision.
Tati, of course, allows Hulot moments of pure grace, such as when Hulot silently, politely bows to a few tables of guests upon first entering the hotel. But my favorite grace note of Hulot’s occurs earlier, on his trip to the hotel. A lounging dog blocks his car from proceeding. Hulot patiently honks his rudimentary horn; the dog finally rises. Before Hulot takes off, he extends his hand through the open window to give the dog, a stranger, a kind pat. The animal may have taken up some of his time, but Hulot takes the time to be a human being—and the universe, stopping, allows him the time in which to do this.
B(U)Y THE BOOK
MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19
Tags:Tati
Posted in Informal Capsule Film Comments | Leave a Comment »