“I’ve often been torn apart by the critics, but the public has always patched me up,” Jacques Tati once said. The sensitive French actor-director developed just five cinema films in more than four decades and thus delighted an audience of millions. Tati’s films have been as successful as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Unlike his overpowering colleagues, Tati also succeeded in creating an artificial everyday cosmos in which reality appears suspended – or at least almost painfully distorted. And he defined a fascinating form of comedy that is both illusionistic and revealing at the same time, which is still timelessly relevant today and has found many imitators from Wes Anderson to David Lynch.
The wonderful hustle and bustle was brilliantly received by the spectators, who immediately fell in love with the quirky idiosyncrasies of Monsieur Hulot, a soignified artificial figure in a coat and with a pipe played personally by Tati, and perhaps also shared the fundamental criticism of civilization, that of the Frenchman blatantly stamped on his films. Just take “My Uncle” (Mon Oncle), perhaps Tati’s most artistic prank: a man, always a little clumsy but devoted to the things he loves, fights tooth and nail against an aseptic postmodern architectural world in which everything supposedly has become easier, but every emotion and restlessness seems banished. Some critics didn’t want to laugh at this frontal attack on the course of events and derided Tati as diehards and narrow-minded nostalgics.
In the meantime, it’s the other way around: the assessors of discerning taste have long recognized the importance of the imaginative French Kasper’s contribution to world cinema. On the other hand, hardly a generation of viewers has grown up who could do something with Tati’s visually striking taunts and inexhaustible cinematic ideas. The director has therefore fallen somewhat into oblivion, in lists of the most important comedies he is no longer represented at the top of the list.
Celebration of slapstick? Festival of Audiovisual Gags!
Tati’s work appears hermetically sealed due to its repetitive themes and symbols. The visionary design of movement and time images, of open (set) spaces as symbolic areas of the unconscious and the use of cartoon-esque drama as a reflection of archetypal human emotions is no longer appreciated today as it was in the 50s, 60s and 70s, i.e. the golden years phase of European auteur cinema.
One of the obvious strengths of these superficially slapstick antics is that Tati caricatured the quirks of his compatriots without constantly stepping on their toes. The subversive energy discharges rather casually from the hidden objects copied from the silent film, which are packed with audiovisual pranks and ludicrous changes of perspective that get by almost without dialogue.
In a short succession of years, Tati shot one masterpiece after the next: “Tatis Schützenfest” (Jour de fête, 1949) tells the story of a jovial postman, “Die Ferien des Monsieur Hulot” (1953) satirizes people’s obsessive need for relaxation in inexhaustibly funny miniatures , “My Uncle” (1958) is an Oscar-winning satirical warning of the absence of play, humor and chance in a technological modern age, “Tatis glorious times” (Playtime, 1967) further enhances this principle, showing a metropolis of monotony , in which tourists search for “old Paris”, and finally “Trafic – Tati im rush hour traffic” (1971) rounds off the cycle about the decline of the western world with a galling reckoning with the automobile, the fixed star of human addiction to speed.
Jacques Tati and the language of objects
Of course it is easy to reduce Jacques Tati’s work to a few common denominators, such as the language-critical unmasking of skewed communication as a Babylonian jumble of languages or the long shots, which today seem somewhat deliberately artificial and show how people are swallowed up in the buildings they create. But the perfectionism of this director, to stage every little detail in front of the camera, to fill every thing with life, so to speak, can hardly be appreciated enough. A five-volume book edition designed by M/M in Paris now gives a deep insight into the artist’s archive for the first time, supported by the rights holders of Tati’s films, “Les Films de Mon Oncle”. It contains essays, interviews, screenplays and numerous previously unpublished letters, sketches, notes, photos, film stills and production materials.
A treasure trove for cineastes, of course – but also a new approach for a future audience that can tap into Tati’s magic in this way. One volume is devoted entirely to excerpts from scenes from the Tati films, which often recapitulate the genius of the pictorial jokes, but also reveal the composition of the idiosyncratic shots. All screenplays for the five cinema films, the TV film “Parade” (1974) and the projects “L’Illusionniste” (ultimately congenially completed by French animation film master Sylvain Chomet, 2010) and “Confusion ” to be read.
Perfectionist on set
What’s impressive here is how meticulously the director prescribed the camerawork and set design. Ironically, Tati, who celebrated chaos and the irrational in his films, left nothing to chance during filming. A book generously gathers materials from his short films as well; marvel at daring film posters, snapshots at film locations (there was always a lot to laugh about!) and sketches for the daring film architecture, which, despite all the love for the details of the narration, has itself written history. The well-known US film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum carefully classifies Tati’s films and explains the often difficult production conditions.
A highlight of this compendium are two volumes that delve into themes in the director’s work (such as his preference for architecture and the often mysterious “language of objects”) and at the same time collect interviews and quotes that have been little known until now. The overall package is the extensive archive chunks of the Taschen-Verlags in no way inferior to Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Charlie Chaplin and the “Bond” and “Star Wars” series, convinces above all with its handy (unfortunately not translated into German) presentation. An extremely limited version even comes with the film set from “Mon Oncle” to build yourself.
Jacques Tati’s films are an absurdly comic inventory of life as a sequence of needs, constraints and (inner) resistance to any form of collectivization. “I don’t want the film to start until you leave the cinema,” wrote the author, actor and director in his viewers’ register. That’s another reason why Tati did everything to create a very concrete stage experience for the screen, in which the rules of the film alone dominate. Words don’t count here, facial expressions, costumes, props, sounds and music count for everything.
In short: films that the cinema needs.
BAGS
The Definitive Jacques Tati
Alison Castle
Slipcase with 5 volumes, 1136 pages
200 euros
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