Distributor: Studiocanal
BD Release Date: 21st July 2014 (UK)
Rating: PG
Running Time: Various
Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati
Buy: Tati Collection Blu-Ray
Jacques Tati is best known for his comedic character Monsieur Hulot, who is featured in the great majority of the films in the new Tati boxset. The films included are his 6 features Jour De Fête, Les Vacanes De M. Hulot, Mon Oncle, Playtime, Trafic, Parade and a disc that compiles his short films.
Tati’s first films are very nice but insubstantial comedies, and it wasn’t until Mon Oncle when he really came into his own. To understand what Tati did is to also understand that he made extensively silent films but with sound. The films have dialogue, but the dialogue is often inaudible or not that essential to the film’s action. From Mon Oncle onwards, and more famously in Playtime, the use of dialogue was very minimal. His films tend to use slapstick but in a more subtle way than that of his obvious influences like Charles Chaplin or Buster Keaton, who said “Tati began where we finished”.
Mon Oncle and Playtime are both satirical films about technology and the modern world not unlike Chaplin’s seminal Modern Times. In Mon Oncle he plays Hulot, but like the majority of the films in the set he becomes a role model for his sister’s son, much to their resentment. They are much more obsessed with their futuristic home than their son who is bored with their way of life; Hulot brings excitement into his life.
Playtime is easily his more ambitious, daring, expensive and ultimately best film. Hulot arrives in a futuristic Paris to try to get a job, but after he runs into some female American tourists, it becomes a farcical fest of brilliant slapstick and visual gags. It’s very much in the vein of Modern Times and even pre-dates some of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian vision of the future in Brazil. Tati built the entire futuristic Paris, which escalated the budget and become known as “Tativille”. The cinematography and production design is to kill for and it even predates the rise of office cubicles!
Playtime was followed by Trafic, which was a troubled shoot and got a mixed response at the time. It is, however, a very fun absurdist film with Hulot as an automobile designer who is trying to get to Amsterdam from Paris for an auto show, but every obstacle that could happen he faces on the way there. It’s lesser Tati but it has the charm of his previous films.
The set features lots of bonus features from commentaries and many analytical featurettes by Stéphane Goudet and a interview from Jonathan Romney. It’s also nicely rounded off by Parade; a live circus film that Tati made in the mid 70s, which sadly was has his last film.
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