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Jacques Tati
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Jacques Tati (October 9 1908 – November 5 1982) was a noted French filmmaker. He was born Jacques Tatischeff, the son of Russian father Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff and Dutch mother Marcelle Claire Van Hoof, in Le Pecq, Yvelines, and died in Paris. Originally a mime, in the late 1930s Tati recorded some of his early supporting cameos on film with some success and ... began his career as a filmmaker. His films have little audible dialogue, but instead are built around elaborate, tightly-choreographed visual gags and carefully integrated sound effects. In all but his very last film, Tati plays
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If it is true that God is in the details, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe asserts, then Jacques Tati's films are architectonic temples. (1) Tati's work is replete with images of the anonymity that seems so prevalent in modern technological life. But anonymity in Tati's films can equally be interpreted to reflect the status and relative position of objects in the life of his characters. Thus the comic nature of objects is viewed as such because there are human subjects from which they are differentiated and which they ultimately affect. Tati infuses his films with a brilliant array of broken objects, curious trinkets, and overly complicated hardware. But this is what makes the universe of Monsieur Hulot (Tati) replete with meaning.
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The French filmmaker of Russian origins , Jacques Tati had a successful career in comedy; famed for his expressive yet not vociferous acting. This biography is the portrait of a man at once dedicated, impassioned and shy, more an artist than a businessman. Bellos collaborated with Tati's daughter, so examining hitherto inaccessible archives including film footage, videos, taped interviews and early drafts of shooting scripts. Amongst Tati's films are "Jour de Fete", "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday", "Mon Oncle", and "Playtime". Though Tati died in 1982 his comedy films are as popular now as in their heyday.
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A masterpiece by the great French comic Jacques Tati, with Monsieur Hulot (Tati) set loose in a house where gadgets overpower everything. Inventive sound effects and minimal dialogue contribute to Tati's wry humor and sensational slapstick. "...a series of brilliant and original sight and sound gags. Monsieur Hulot's second screen appearance was enough to put him among the immortals" (Faber Companion to Foreign Film). The DVD is a Criterion Collection Edition, with restored image and sound, and includes Tati's 1947 short, L'Ecole des Facteurs, and an introduction by Monty Python's Terry Jones. In French with English subtitles.
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Jacques Tati's grandfather was the Dutch frame-maker who built Van Gogh's frames, and Tati was expected to enter the family trade. Much to his parents' disgust, he became a mime and then began to get bit parts in movies. He longed to record his own comic routines and made a short film about François, a rural postman. François' adventures were expanded into a feature, Jour de Fête, in which he becomes obsessed with American efficiency and is determined to apply modern methods (unsuccessfully) to his bicycle delivery route. The film was printed in an idiosyncratic black and white process; in some scenes selected objects were hand colored.
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Jacques Tati’s Playtime is a film that depicts Paris as a typical international city. This look at Paris is of the city as a homogenous space. Buildings are all nearly identical and a great variety of programs such as offices, exhibit spaces, restaurants, clubs, homes, drug stores and markets all occupy the ground floor space. This homogeneity questions the importance of history in society, as the film turns a blind eye to the historical and monumental character of Paris. To contrast America to Paris makes an American city seem like a place of future and technology, as opposed to a place of history. The American tourists in the film make the city seem like a satellite America.
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Jacques Tati