Happy Birthday, Jacques Tati! Born today in 1907 as Jacques Tatischeff, this French mime, comic actor, screenwriter and film director had worked under these titles throughout his long career.
The comic genius was a descendant from a noble Russian family. His father Emmanuel, was a well-to-do picture framer. However, to his lasting dismay, Tati had no intention of following in the family trade of framing and restoration.
Instead, he went on to pursue an education (specializing in arts and engineering) at the military academy of Lycée de Saint Germain-en-laye.
After graduating, his main preoccupation became sports. He already boxed and played tennis and was introduced to rugby during a sojourn in London, England, United Kingdom.
Back in Paris, France, he joined the Racing Club de France from 1925-1930. For some time, he seriously contemplated a career as a professional rugby player.
However, Tati also had an uncanny talent for pantomime, imitating athletes at his school to the amusement of classmates and teachers.
By the time he had reached the age of twenty-four, encouraged by his success as an entertainer in the annual revue of the Racing Club, he suddenly decided to combine his two passions and, without further ado, entered the world of show business.
From 1931, Tati toured the Parisian music halls, theatres and circuses with his impersonations, acrobatics, drunk waiter and comic tennis routines (the latter would be famously re-enacted by his alter ego, Monsieur Hulot).
It was in this surrogate character of the tall, bumbling, eternally umbrella-toting and pipe-smoking Monsieur Hulot, that Tati had invented a charming, quizzically innocent symbol of humanity lost in a relentlessly modernizing modern age.
He had by this time changed his name to 'Tati' in order to accommodate theatre bills. The French magazine Le Jour was among the first to acknowledge his growing popularity, describing Jacques as "a clown of great talent".
At the same time, he made his screen debut in a series of short featurettes, tailored to show off his practiced gags.
During WWII, Tati lived in a small house in Vijon, Indre, in the Centre of France. He promised his neighbors to shoot his film there and in St-Sévère, which was the biggest town around. This was his 1949 French black and white comedy film 'Jour de Fête' ('The Big Day').
Four years later, Tati co-wrote, directed and starred in the 1953 French black and white comedy film ‘Les Vacances de M. Hulot’ (released as ‘Monsieur Hulot's Holiday’ in the United States.
When the ever-hapless Monsieur Hulot (Tati) decides to vacation at a beautiful seaside resort, rest and relaxation don't last long, given the gangly gent's penchant for ridiculous antics.
While simply out to enjoy himself, the well-meaning Hulot inevitably stumbles into numerous misadventures, including an utterly disastrous attempt at playing tennis, as he encounters fellow French vacationers from various social classes, as well as foreign tourists.
The film introduced the pipe-smoking, well-meaning but clumsy character of Monsieur Hulot, who appears in Tati's subsequent films.
Upon release, ‘Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday’ gained an international reputation for its creator when released in 1953. The film was very successful, as it had a total of over five million admissions in France.
With ‘Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday’, Tati reinvented the visual comedy of the silent era in a style not dissimilar to that of French actor, director, screenwriter, producer and comedian of the silent film era Max Linder.
The film is more than just a brilliant collection of sight gags, but also an ironic observation of the foibles of human nature.
Tati acknowledged the influence of both Buster Keaton and W.C.
Fields in the creation of Hulot. Very much like Keaton or Charles Chaplin, he was also a consummate perfectionist who micro-managed each scene with unerring precision. Comedy for Tati was a serious business.
Four years later, Tati co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in the second film of which he is best known. This was the 1958 French/Italian Eastmancolor comedy film ‘Mon Oncle’ (‘My Uncle’).
Genial, bumbling Monsieur Hulot (Tati) loves his top-floor apartment in a grimy corner of the city, and cannot fathom why his sister's family has moved to the suburbs.
Their house is an ultra-modern nightmare, which Hulot only visits for the sake of stealing away his rambunctious young nephew Gerard Arpel (Alain Bécourt).
Hulot's sister Madame Arpel (Adrienne Servantie), however, wants to win him over to her new way of life, and conspires to set him up with a wife and job.
The following year, ‘Mon Oncle’ won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. This occurred at the 31st Academy Awards in early April 1959.
Said Tati at the ceremony: “I find that the people who speak the worst English want to talk more than the others.”
Eight years later, Tati co-wrote, directed and starred in the third and final film of which he is best known. This was the 1967 French/Italian comedy film ‘Playtime’.
Clumsy Monsieur Hulot (Tati) finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost.
His roundabout journey parallels that of American tourist Barbara (Barbara Dennek), and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another.
They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.
'Playtime’ was made from 1964 through 1967. Shot in 70mm, the work is notable for its enormous set, which Tati had built specially for the film.
This included Tati's trademark use of subtle yet complex visual comedy supported by creative sound effects; dialogue is frequently reduced to the level of background noise.
The film required the creation of a massive glass and concrete high-rise set with myriad corridors and cubicles (dubbed 'Tativille' and built at a cost of $800,000) which raised the picture's total budget to $3 million. Because of this, it left Tati bankrupt.
At the time of its release, the film was considered a financial failure. However, it had to stand the test of time.
Today, ‘Playtime’ is considered Tati's masterpiece, as well as his most daring work.
Tati’s next project was the 1971 French/Italian comedy film ‘Trafic’. The feature, a satire of modern man's love of cars, failed to recoup these losses.
Creditors later impounded Tati's films, which were not re-released until 1977. This was when a canny Parisian distributor expunged his outstanding debts.
In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly of the Greatest Movie Directors, Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time.
With only six feature-length films to his credit as director, he directed fewer films than any other director on that list of 50.
In 2012, 'Playtime' was ranked 43rd in the British Film Institute's critics' list and 37th in their directors' list of Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time.
Also in 2012, Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films ever made ranked 'Playtime' in at #43.
The trademarks in Tati's films include often leaving hints about the theme of his next feature film. For example, the ending of 'Mon Oncle' paves the way for the technology-minded 'Playtime'.
By those standards, the film that would have followed 'Trafic' would be about space travel or subways.
Other trademarks included using a unique sound design in most of his films: almost all dialogue (except for the most essential lines) is toned down to the background. However, sounds that are crucial in comic gags are amplified.
Also, the leading character in almost all of Tati's movies is the eccentric Mr. Hulot: a conservative, lanky, inept yet good-willing character who seems to be doomed to do everything wrong in the modern world.
As English-born translator and biographer David Bellos puts it, "Tati, from l'Ecole des facteurs to Playtime, is the epitome of what an auteur is (in film theory) supposed to be: the controlling mind behind a vision of the world on film".
Throughout his career, Tati remained obdurately committed to his artistic integrity and to his independence as a filmmaker. He was one of few directors who consistently employed non-professional actors.
Tati even turned down offers from Hollywood for a fifteen-minute series of television comedies, following the success of 'Mon Oncle'.
He summed it all up by declaring in the November 6, 1982 issue of the New York Times: "I could have satisfied the producers of the world by making a whole series of little Hulot films, and I would have made a lot of money. But I would not have been able to do what I like - work freely".
Tati was a chess master of modern film comedy; a creator of complex comic structures in which gag constructions and audience expectations become pawns on his cinematic board.
The recurring figure in these games was Monsieur Hulot, a blank-faced comic cipher garbed in a crumple raincoat and ill-fitting trousers; an ever-present pipe muffling any words he may say, an umbrella clutched in indecisive hands.
His determinedly irresolute stride across Tati's expansive canvases is the unlikely spark that sets the comic machinery afire.
Over period of two decades, Tati managed to reshape slapstick comedy, turning it into an intellectual parlor game.
Tati had been active from 1934–1975.
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