Jacques Tati (October 9, 1907 – November 5, 1982) was a French film director and actor. Want to get to know his work? today we will discuss where to start with Jacques Tati.
Jacques Tati’s Life and Work
Tati was born to Georg-Emanuel Tatishev (a Russian nobleman, a descendant of the Rurik dynasty) and Marcel-Claire van Hoof (of Dutch descent) in the Yvelines district near Paris. In his early days, he was a professional rugby player and in the 1930s he specialized as a mime and appeared occasionally in movies. At the same time, he also experimented with making short silent films.
He released his first feature film, “Jour de fête”, in 1949. This film embodies many of the characteristics of his later films: humor, refined slapstick based on incidents, very little dialogue, and use of music and sound effects instead of speech. This film does not yet feature the main character of Tati in all his other films (except the last one), played by himself, Mr. Hulot (Monsieur Hulot). Mr. Hulot always wears the same raincoat, wears a hat, and smokes a pipe. He is an eccentric character whose reality tends to surprise him again and again. His completely innocent look sheds a ridiculous light on the conventions of society, modernism, and more covertly the political and economic structure.
Mr. Hulot is first featured in Tati’s second 1953 film, “Mr. Hulot’s Vacation” (Les Vacances de M. Hulot), in which Mr. Hulot goes on a summer vacation in a seaside resort village, where he tries clumsily to woo a girl and inadvertently wreaks havoc. Hulot also looks funnily at a variety of everyday events and situations that are illuminated in a ridiculous light when viewed through his eyes.
Tati’s most successful film was his first color film, “It’s My Uncle” (Mon Uncle), from 1958 which even won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The film criticizes the Novoriche middle class and consumer culture, as Mr. Hulot visits his sister and husband’s home and encounters a variety of absurd inventions, including a fountain on the grass, which he is sure is personally harassing him.
To his ambitious film “Playtime” he devoted nine years of filming and building a huge set, which remained intact even after the filming was completed and was called Tativille (as in Tati’s city) until it was destroyed. Released in 1967, the film features a modernist glass and steel Paris in which a group of American tourists wanders, alongside Mr. Hulot who stumbles upon a job interview. The film was cut from an original 155-minute version to a 126-minute version and was defined by François Truffaut as “a movie from another planet.” The film was a complete failure commercially and resulted in Tati’s bankruptcy. In retrospect, however, the film gained critical acclaim as “the pinnacle of his work … the pinnacle of his cinematic vision … in which he invested everything he had to invest, spirit and material.”
In 1971, the last film in which Mr. Hulot appeared, “Trafic” was shown. Tati then performed several other works, mostly for television, but did not return to play Mr. Hulot.
Where to Start With Jacques Tati
We have seen a Reddit pole on this subject, and most answers to the question “Where to start with Jacques Tati” was, to begin with, the classic M. Hulot’s Holiday, as it is the best starting point. It’s nice, to begin with, that and then watch the ambition and execution of Tati grow. In case you have the Tati box set, make your way from M. Hulot’s Holiday to Mon Oncle to Play Time.
Proceed in chronological order, with one crucial difference: watch PlayTime last. We say this because we feel his last two films (Trafic and Parade) are underrated and people are more easily disappointed by watching them after the mind-blowing perfection that is PlayTime.
another option is to start with Mon Oncle (a picture from this film can be seen in the featured image of this post). It’s one of his best and it’s accessible. Then go chronologically but again, the advice is to finish with Playtime, as it is his masterpiece.