The creator of Mr. Hulot comes to India
Jacques Tati – Voted the 46th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly and the creator of the most memorable comic character in cinema- Monsieur Hulot can now be a part of your personal collection with some of his best films being released on DVD in India.
Easily one of the greatest names in the history of cinema, Jacques Tati is most associated with French cinema outside of France.There are few film directors who can be credited with the invention of a new form of cinema, and fewer still who have attained perfection in their creation. Tati is that rarest of phenomenon in filmmaking – an auteur with extraordinary powers of observation and an equally impressive ability to entertain. Yet, for all his genius, Tati’s filmmaking career was marred by financial insecurity, resulting mainly from the antipathy of his home market. It is indeed ironic that his films should receive greater appreciation abroad than in France. For Tati, the recognition he was owed in France arrived too late, and his legacy consists of no more than half a dozen full length films and a few short films. Although Tati’s output was not great in terms of quantity, the impact of these few films has been enormous, making as significant a contribution to French cinema as the works of other cinematic giants, such as Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson and Fran'§ois Truffaut.
There are several recurrent themes in Tati’s comedic work, most notably in Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) and Traffic (Trafic, 1971): Tati lampoons Western society’s obsession with material goods, particularly American-style consumerism; the pressure-cooker environment of modern society; the superficiality of relationships among France’s various social classes; and the cold and often impractical nature of space-age technology and design.
The leading character in almost all of Tati’s movies is Mr.Hulot – a goofy, well-meaning character who is a misfit in the modern world with his trademark raincoat, umbrella and pipe.
Another Tati trademark was 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 to the gags are amplified.
Tati’s first major feature, Jour de f'ªte (The Big Day) was intended to be the first French feature film shot in color. He simultaneously shot the film in black-and-white as an insurance policy. The newly developed Thomson color system proved impractical, as it could not deliver color prints; Jour de f'ªte was therefore released only in black-and-white. Unlike his later films, it has many scenes with dialogue and offers a droll, affectionate view of life in rural France.
His second film, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot’s Holiday), was released in 1953. Les Vacances introduced the character of M. Hulot and follows his adventures in France during the mandatory August vacation at a beach resort, lampooning several hidebound elements of French political and social classes along the way.
Tati’s next film, Mon Oncle (My Uncle) 1958, was his first film to be released in color and perhaps his best-known work. The plot centers on M. Hulot’s comedic, quixotic and childlike struggle with postwar France’s mindless obsession with modernity and American-style consumerism. Mon Oncle quickly became an international success, and won that year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Oscar), a Special Prize at Cannes, as well as the prestigious New York Film Critics Award.
Playtime (1967), shot in 70mm, was the most daring and expensive work of Tati’s career; it took him nine years to complete and he was forced to borrow heavily from his own resources to complete the picture.
In 2007 a short film depicting Tati as a schoolboy was released entitled Open the Door, written and directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige and meant as a sort of homage to Tati.
As an adolescent, Jacques Tati’s first love was sport. In the changing rooms, he would often mime his sporting activities to his team mates, who, so impressed, persuaded him to take his act to the stage.
One obvious way in which Tati bucked the trend was by religiously refusing to engage professional actors. He preferred to train non-professional actors, in a similar fashion to Robert Bresson (whose approach to filmmaking bears some striking similarities with Tati’s). In Jour de f'ªte, Tati developed a style of film which he would not depart from, but rather constantly refine, in the course of his filmmaking career. Tati’s films are characteristically plot-less physical comedies, sometimes resembling silent comedies of the 1920s.
To check the list of his films now available on DVD click here.
blogged by Shamath Mazumdar, NDTV Lumière
Tags: jacques tati, Jour de fête, Mon Oncle, Mr. Hulot, Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Playtime, Traffic, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
got two sets each of them and gifted it to people. Bring Trafic too, it’s now available on the DVD. And guys make it more interesting, tell us more and not just when it’s about to release.
can you please put together the whole catalogue here and talk about the films you are bringing in next six months. So people can talk about which films they would want to see and which they are looking forward to. Also can one buy these off the net. And info regarding whether they are censored or not.
thanks for the feedback Anurag!
will incorporate everything in our next post…
cheers!
I grew up with my father being a huuuuuge fan of Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot! I am pleasantly surprised to find that I’ll be able to get a DVD set of his films in India.
Have to agree with Mr. Kashyap about bringing in more on this fascinating filmmaker, as you started to do in your riveting first paragraph.