Jacques Tati
Encyclopedia
Jacques Tati was a French filmmaker, working as a comedic actor, writer and director. In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

of the Greatest Movie Directors Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time. With only six feature-length films to his credit as director, he directed fewer films than any other director on this list of 50.

Family Origins

Jacques Tati was born French with the addition of Russian, Dutch and Italian ancestry. His father, George Emmanuel Tatischeff born in 1875 in Paris (d. 1957), was the son of Count Dmitriy Tatischeff (Дмитрий Татищев) , General of the Imperial Russian Army and military attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...

 at the Russian Embassy in Paris. The Tatischeffs (also spelled Tatishchev) were a Russian noble family of male-line Rurikid descent. Whilst stationed in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 Count Dmitri Tatischeff married a French woman, Rose Anahalie Alinquant. Under suspicious circumstances Count Dmitri Tatischeff dies from injuries sustained in a horse riding accident shortly after the birth of George Emmanuel. As a child George Emmanuel experiences turbulent times: being forcibly removed from France and taken to Russia to live, in 1883 his mother, Rose Anahalie Alinquant brings him back to France where they settle in the fairly remote: Le Pecq
Le Pecq
Le Pecq is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the center.-Geography:...

, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...

 on the outskirts of Paris. In 1903, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff married the Dutch-Italian Marcelle Claire van Hoof (d. 1968). Together they had two children, Natalie (b. 1905) and Jacques. Claire's Dutch father, a friend of Van Gough and whose clients included Toulouse Lautrec, was the owner of a prestigious picture framing company near the Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the...

 in central Paris and he brought Georges-Emmanuel into the family business. Subsequently, Georges-Emmanuel became the director of the company Cadres Van Hoof and the Tatischeff family enjoyed a relatively high standard of living.

Childhood and Youth

Jacques Tatischeff appears to have been an indifferent student yet excelled in the sports of Tennis and Horse Riding before leaving school at the age of 16 (1923) to take up an apprenticeship in the family business where he was trained as a picture framer by his grandfather. Between 1927-1928 he completed his military national service at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...

 with the Cavalries16th Regiment of Dragoons. Upon graduating the military he takes on an internship in London where he is first introduced to the sport of Rugby. Returning to Paris he joins the semi-professional rugby team Racing Club de France whose captain was Alfred Sauvy
Alfred Sauvy
Alfred Sauvy was a demographer, anthropologist and historian of the French economy. Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War...

 and whose supporters included Tristan Bernard
Tristan Bernard
Tristan Bernard was a French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer.-Life:Born Paul Bernard into a Jewish family in Besançon, Doubs, Franche-Comté, France, he was the son of an architect...

. It was at the Racing Club de France that Jacques Tatischeff first discovered his comic talents entertaining his team mates during intervals with hilarious impersonations of their sporting endeavours. At Racing Club de France Jacques Tatischeff is introduced to fellow team mate Jacques Broido and become lifelong friends.

Between 1931 and 1932 the global economic crisis reaches France at the same time that he leaves both the Racing Club de France and to his family’s disapproval his apprenticeship at Cadres Van Hoof. Giving up a relatively comfortable middle class life for one of a struggling performing artist it is during this difficult economic time that he develops a collection of highly physical mimes that would become his Impressions Sportives(Sporting Impressions). Each year from 1931 to 1934 he would participate in a show (amateur) organized by Alfred Sauvy.

Entertainment Debut

Although likely that he had paid music hall engagements before his act is first attested in 1935 when he performs at the newspaper Le Journal gala to celebrate the French victory in the competition to set the then record transatlantic crossing from Normandy. Among the honourable spectators was the influential writer Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...

. Tati’s act also caught the attention of theatre director, Max Trebor, who offered him an engagement at the Theatre-Michel where it quickly became the star act. After his success at the Theatre-Michel Tati then tried to make it in London and played a short season at the Finsbury Park Empire in March 1936. Upon his return to Paris in the same year he was immediately hired as top billing at the A.B.C alongside the singer Marie Dubas
Marie Dubas
Marie Dubas was a music-hall singer, diseuse and comedienne.Born in Paris, France, Marie Dubas began her career as a stage actress but became famous as a singer. Using the great Yvette Guilbert as her model, Dubas started singing in the small cabarets of Montmartre mixing comedy into her routine...

 where he would work uninterrupted until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was for Tati’s performances of his now finally tuned Impressions Sportives at the A.B.C that the previously impressed Colete would gloriously write,

“From now on no celebration, no artistic or acrobatic spectacle can do without this amazing performer, who has invented something quite his own…His act is partly ballet and partly sport, partly satire and partly charade. He has devised a way of being both the player, the ball and the tennis racquet, of being simultaneously the football and the goalkeeper, the boxer and the opponent, the bicycle and the cyclist. Without any props, he conjures up his accessories and his partners. He has suggestive powers of all great artists. How gratifying it was to see the audience’s warm reaction! Tati’s success says a lot about the sophistication of the allegedly “uncouth” public, about its taste for novelty and its appreciation of style. Jacques Tati, the horse and rider conjured, will show all of Paris the living image of that legendary creature, the centaur”.


During the 1930s he also performed at the Scala
Scala
Scala may refer to:* SCALA, the Student Chapter of the American Library Association* FF Scala and FF Scala Sans, typefaces by Dutch typeface designer Martin Majoor* Scala Sancta or Holy Stairs, a staircase in Rome, Italy...

 in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 between 1937-38 and began to experiment with film acting in following shorts:
  • 1932 : Oscar, champion de tennis directed by Jack Forrester written and starring Jacques Tati (film lost);
  • 1934 : On demande une brute directed by Charles Barrois
    Charles Barrois
    Charles Barrois was a French geologist and palaeontologist.Barrois was born at Lille and educated at the college in that town, where he studied geology under Professor Jules Gosselet...

    , with Jacques Tati as (Roger), Enrico Sprocani as le clown Rhum (Enrico) ;
  • 1935 : Gai dimanche
    Gai dimanche
    Gai Dimanche is a 1935 three reel film written by and starring Jacques Tati and his friend Rhum. The pair star as down-and-outs who try to generate funds by providing an impromptu leisure tour in a rickety bus they wangle use of for free...

    directed by Jacques Berr, wrote and starring Jacpues Tati and Enrico Sprocani;
  • 1936 : Soigne ton gauche directed by René Clément, staring Jacques Tati (Roger), Jacques Broido (sparring partner), Max Martel (the postman).

World War II

In September 1939 Tati was conscripted back into his 16th Regiment of Dragoons which was then incorporated into the 3rd Division Legere de Cavalerie (DLC) where he saw action in the Battle of the Meuse, in May 1940, when the German Army marched through the Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...

 into northern France. The 3rd DLC retreated from Meuse to Mussidan in the Dordogne where the division was demobilized after the Armistice
Armistice
An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...

 was declared on the 22nd June 1940.

Returning to Paris Tati resumed his civilian profession of a cabaret performer finding employment at impresario Léon Volterra’s Lido de Paris where he performs his Sporting Impressions from 1940-42. At the Lido de Paris he meets and falls in love with the young dual national Austrian
Austrian
Austrian can refer to:* Someone from Austria or of Austrian descent. See Austrians.* Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen. See Austrian nationality law.* Something associated with the country Austria...

/Czech
Czech
Czech may refer to:* Czech cuisine* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe* Czech language* Czechs, the people of the area* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech and Rus...

 dancer Herta Schiel who had fled Vienna with her sister Molly at the time of the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

. In the summer of 1942 Herta gives birth to their daughter, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel. Upon the pressure of his sister Nathalie, Tati refuses to recognise the child and is dispelled from the Lido by Volterra at the end of the 1942 season. In 1943 after a short engagement at the A.B.C where Edith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

 was headlining Tati leaves Paris under a cloud with his friend Henri Marquet
Henri Marquet
Henri Marquet is a French assistant director and screenwriter. He was co-nominated with Jacques Tati for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for the film Mr. Hulot's Holiday .- External links :...

 and they settle in the Village of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre
Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre
Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre is a commune in the Indre department in central France.It is situated near the source of the Indre River. The town has a population today of approximately 899 ....

. While residing at Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre they complete the script for L'École des facteurs
L'École des facteurs
School for Postmen is a 1947 French short comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail. The film includes several sight gags that involve his bicycle...

 (The School for Postmen) that would later provide material for his first feature, Jour de fête
Jour de fête
Jour de fête is the title of a film comedy by the French director Jacques Tati. Jour de fête tells the story of an inept and easily distracted French mailman who frequently interrupts his duties to converse with the local inhabitants, as well as inspect the traveling fair that has come to his...

. Herta Schiel would remain in Paris throughout war where she would make acquaintance with the Physician Jacques Weil when he was called upon to treat her sister Molly for the then incurable Tuberculosis (TB). Through Wiel, second in command of the Juggler network of the SOE F Section networks
SOE F Section networks
These are the networks, also known as circuits, established in France by F Section of the British Special Operations Executive during the Second World War...

, both sisters were recruited into the resistance.

In 1944 Tati returns to Paris and after a brief courtships marries Micheline Winter.

Considered as possible substitute for Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...

 in Les Enfants du Paradis, he plays the ghost in Sylvie and the Ghost (Sylvie et le fantôme
Sylvie et le fantôme
Sylvie et le fantôme is a 1946 French film directed by Claude Autant-Lara.-Plot:Sylvie is fascinated by the portrait of long dead Alain de Francigny and she is upset when her father, Baron Eduard, is forced to sell the painting. The Baron hires an actor to appear as Alain's ghost on the eve of...

) (Claude Autant-Lara appeared as Sylvie) and also appeared in The Devil in the same body. Here he mets Fred Orain, studio director of St. Maurice and the Victorine in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

.

Jacques Tati, Director

In early 1946 Jacques Tati and Fred Orain found the production company Cady-Films that would produce Tati’s first three films.

With the exception of his first and last films, Tati played the gauche and socially inept lead character, Monsieur Hulot
Monsieur Hulot
Monsieur Hulot is a character created and played by French comic Jacques Tati for a series of films in the 1950s and '60s, namely Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot , Mon Oncle , Play Time and Trafic...

. With his trademark raincoat, umbrella and pipe, Hulot is among the most memorable comic characters in cinema. Several themes recur in Tati's comedic work, most notably in Mon Oncle
Mon Oncle
Mon Oncle is a 1958 film comedy by French filmmaker Jacques Tati. The first of Tati's films to be released in colour, Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign...

, Playtime
Playtime
Play Time is French director Jacques Tati's fourth major film, and generally considered to be his most daring film. It was shot in 1964 through 1967 and released in 1967. In Play Time, Tati again plays Monsieur Hulot, a character who had appeared in some of his earlier films, including Mon Oncle...

and Trafic
Trafic
Trafic is a 1971 comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Trafic was the last film to feature Tati's famous character of Monsieur Hulot, and followed the vein of earlier Tati films that lampooned modern society.-synopsis:...

. They include 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.

On October 23rd 1946 Tati fathers his second child Sophie Catherine Tatischeff
Sophie Tatischeff
Sophie Catherine Tatischeff , was a French film editor and director.Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Tatischeff was the daughter of Jacques Tati and began her career as assistant editor on her father's film Play Time...

.

L'École des facteurs (The School for Postmen)

At first Rene Clement was approached to direct, L'École des facteurs
L'École des facteurs
School for Postmen is a 1947 French short comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail. The film includes several sight gags that involve his bicycle...

 but being preoccupied directing, La Bataille du rail
La Bataille du rail
La Bataille du rail is a 1946 war movie which tells the courageous efforts by French railway workers to sabotage Nazi reinforcement-troop trains....

 directing duties fell onto Tati who would also star in the short comedy of rural life. Encouragingly L'École des facteurs was enthusiastically well received upon release winning the “Max Linder Prize” for film comedy in 1947.

Jour de fête (The Big Day)

Tati's first major feature, Jour de fête
Jour de fête
Jour de fête is the title of a film comedy by the French director Jacques Tati. Jour de fête tells the story of an inept and easily distracted French mailman who frequently interrupts his duties to converse with the local inhabitants, as well as inspect the traveling fair that has come to his...

 (The Big Day), tells the story of an inept rural village postman who interrupts his duties to inspect the traveling fair that has come to town. Influenced by too much wine and a documentary on the rapidity of the American postal service, he goes to hilarious lengths to speed his mail deliveries aboard his bicycle. Tati filmed it in 1947 in the village of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre where he had found refuge during the war. Due to the reluctance of French distributors Jour de fête was first successfully released in London in March 1949 before obtaining a French release on the 4th July 1949 where it became a great public success while receiving the 1950 Le Grand prix du cinéma français. The film was intended to be the first French feature film shot in colour; Tati simultaneously shot the film in black-and-white as an insurance policy. The newly developed Thomson colour system proved impractical, as it could not deliver colour prints; Jour de fête 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. The colour version was restored by his younger daughter, film editor and director Sophie Tatischeff, and released in 1995. The film won a prize at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

.

1949 was also the year of the birth of Tatis son, Pierre-François Tatischeff, alias Pierre Tati. Both Pierre and Sophie would go on to work in the French film industry in various capacities beginning in the early 1970's. Notably, they both worked on Jean-Pierre Melville's last film, Un flic
Un flic
Un flic is a 1972 French film, the last directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It stars Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, and Richard Crenna.-Plot:Four men rob a bank in Saint-Jean-de-Monts...

, (1972).

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday)

His second film, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday), was released in 1953. Les Vacances introduced the character of Mr. 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. It was shot almost entirely in the tiny west-coast seaside village of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer in the Loire Atlantique region. The hotel in which Mr Hulot stays (l'Hotel de la Plage) is still there and a statue memorializing the director has been erected along the beach. Tati had fallen in love with the coastline while staying in nearby Port Charlotte with his friends, Mr and Mrs Lemoine, before the war and resolved to return one day to make a film there. The film was widely praised by critics, and earned Tati an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 nomination for Best Original Screenplay which was shared with Henri Marquet
Henri Marquet
Henri Marquet is a French assistant director and screenwriter. He was co-nominated with Jacques Tati for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for the film Mr. Hulot's Holiday .- External links :...

. Production of the movie would also see the reintroduction of Jacques Lagrange into the life of Jacques Tati beginning a lifelong working partnership between the painter who would become his set designer.It remains one of the best-loved French films of that period. The film's comic influence has extended well beyond France and can be found as recently as 2007 in the Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...

 comic vehicle Mr Bean's Holiday.

André Bazin
André Bazin
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...

, founder of the influential journal Cahiers du cinema
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...

wrote in his 1957 essay, “Fifteen Years of French Cinema” that,

“Tati could easily have made lots of money with sequels featuring his comic character of the little rural mailman. He chose instead to wait for four years, and, after much reflection, he revised his formula completely. The result this time was an extraordinary masterpiece about which one can say, I think, that it is the most radical innovation in comic cinema since the Marx Brothers: I am referring, of course, to Les Vacances de M. Hulot".


Various problems would delay the release of Tati’s follow up to his international hit. In 1955 he suffers a fairly serious car accident that physically impairs his left hand. Then aggrieved by Fred Orain a dispute ensues and Tati breaks away from Cady Films creating his own production company, Specta Films in 1956.

Mon Oncle (My Uncle)

Tati's next film, Mon Oncle
Mon Oncle
Mon Oncle is a 1958 film comedy by French filmmaker Jacques Tati. The first of Tati's films to be released in colour, Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign...

(My Uncle 1958), was his first film to be released in colour. The plot centers on Mr. Hulot's comedic, quixotic and childlike struggle with postwar France's obsession with modernity and American-style consumerism entwined with the relationship he has with his nine year old nephew Gérard. Mon Oncle quickly became an international success, and won that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

, a Special Prize at Cannes
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...

, as well as the New York Film Critics Award
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
New York Film Critics' Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. It is considered one of the most important precursors to the Academy Awards....

. In Place de la Pelouse stands a bronze statue of Tati as Monsieur Hulot talking to a boy, in a pose echoing the movie’s poster designed by Pierre Etaix
Pierre Étaix
Pierre Étaix is a French clown, comedian and filmmaker. Étaix made a series of acclaimed short- and feature-length films in the 1960s, many of them co-written by influential screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. He has won an Academy Award. Due to a legal dispute with a distribution company, these...

.

On receiving his Oscar Tati was offered any treat that the Academy could bestow on him. To their surprise Tati simply requested the opportunity to visit Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel
Arthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...

, Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...

 and Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...

 at their nursing homes. Keaton reportedly said that Tati’s work with sound had carried on the true tradition of silent cinema. .

As guest Artistic Director at AFI
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...

 FEST 2010 David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...

 selected Tati’s Mon Oncle alongside, Hour of the Wolf
Hour of the Wolf
Hour of the Wolf is a 1968 Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann. It combines elements of the film drama, surrealist film and horror film.-Plot:...

(Dir Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...

), Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...

(Dir Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

), Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...

(Dir Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

) and Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a street in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway at the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Palisades...

 (Dir Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...

) to be screened in his sidebar program explaining that,

“I picked these particular films because they are the ones that have inspired me most. I think each is a masterpiece,”


Of Tati Lynch would add in a conversation with Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...

 that, “You know, I feel like in a way he’s a kindred soul”. “That guy is so creative, it’s unbelievable. I think he’s one of the all-time greats.”.

PlayTime

Considered by many as his master piece,Play Time (1967), shot in 70mm, was to be Tati's most ambitious yet risky and expensive work of his career that would end up bankrupting him. It took nine years to make and he had to borrow heavily from his own resources to complete the picture. For Playtime, Tati fabricated a set (dubbed "Tativille") on the outskirts of Paris that emulated an entire modern Paris. In the film, Hulot and a group of American tourists lose themselves in the futuristic glass-and-steel of the Parisian suburbs, where only human nature and a few views of the city of Paris itself still emerge to breathe life into the city. PlayTime had even less of a plot than his earlier films, and Tati endeavored to make his characters, including Hulot, almost incidental to his portrayal of a modernist and robotic Paris. PlayTime was originally 155 minutes in length, but Tati soon released an edited version of 126 minutes, and this is the version that became a general theatre release in 1967. Later versions appeared in 35mm format. In 1979, a copy of the film was revised again to 108 minutes, and this re-edited version was released on VHS video in 1984. Though PlayTime was a critical success (François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...

 praised it as "a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently"), it was a massive and expensive commercial failure, eventually resulting in Tati's bankruptcy. Tati was forced to sell the family house of Saint-Germain shortly after the death of his mother, Claire Van Hoof, and move back into Paris. Specta Films was then placed into administration concluding in the liquidation of the company in 1974 with an auction of all movie rights held by the company for little more than 120,000 francs.

Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

 has said he was paying a very slight homage to PlayTime in his 2004 The Terminal
The Terminal
The Terminal is a 2004 American comedy-drama film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. It is about a man trapped in a terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport when he is denied entry into the United States and at the same time cannot...

  adding “I thought of two directors when I made Terminal. I thought this was a tribute to Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...

 and his honest sentiment, and it was a tribute to Jacques Tati and the way he allowed his scenes to go on and on and on. The character he played in
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle was all about resourcefulness and using what’s around him to make us laugh”

While on the set of PlayTime, Tati made a short film about his comedic and cinematic technique, Cours du soir
Cours du soir
Cours du Soir is a thirty-minute short film in which Jacques Tati demonstrates the art of mime to a group of enthusiastic students. Amongst skits performed are those of a tennis player and a horse rider – sketches that initially brought Tati acclaim on music hall stages in the 1930s. Nicolas...

(Evening Classes, 1967), in which Tati gives a lesson in the art of comedy to a class of would-be actors.

1970's

In 1969, with reduced ambition, Jacques Tati created a new production company, CEPEC, to oversee his opportunities in movie and TV production.

Trafic (Traffic)

The Dutch funded Trafic
Trafic
Trafic is a 1971 comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Trafic was the last film to feature Tati's famous character of Monsieur Hulot, and followed the vein of earlier Tati films that lampooned modern society.-synopsis:...

(Traffic), although originally designed to be a TV movie, received a theater release in 1971 and placed Monsieur Hulot back at the centre of the action. It was the last Hulot film, and followed the vein of earlier works that lampooned modern society. In the film, Hulot is a bumbling automobile inventor traveling to an exhibition in a gadget-filled recreational vehicle. Despite its modest budget, Trafic was still very much a Tati film, carefully staged and choreographed in its scenes and effects.

Parade

Tati's last completed film, Parade, a film produced for Swedish television in 1973, is more or less a filmed circus performance featuring Tati's mime acts and other performers.
In 1977, he received an honorary César
César Award
The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma....

from the French Film Institute for his lifetime contribution to cinema.

In 1978, Tati began filming a short documentary on a French (Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

n) soccer team playing the UEFA Cup final, 'Forza Bastia
SC Bastia
Sporting Club de Bastia is a French association football club based in Bastia on the island of Corsica. The club currently plays in the Championnat National, the third division of French football. Bastia previously had stints in both Ligue 1 and Ligue 2...

', which he did not complete. His younger daughter, Sophie Tatischeff later edited the remaining footage which was released in 2002 after her own death from lung cancer in 2001.

Weakened by serious health problems, Tati died on 4th November, 1982 of a pulmonary embolism, leaving a final scenario called Confusion that he had completed with Jacques Lagrange.

In Paris Match
Paris Match
Paris Match is a French weekly magazine. It covers major national and international news along with celebrity lifestyle features. It was founded in 1949 by the industrialist Jean Prouvost....

, Philippe Labro
Philippe Labro
Philippe Labro, is a French author, journalist and film director, born in Montauban on 27 August 1936. He has worked for RTL, Paris Match, TF1 and Antenne 2...

 reported the death of Jacques Tati under the heading,
“Adieu Monsieur Hulot. On le pleure mort, il aurait fallu l'aider vivant !”, “Goodbye Monsieur Hulot. In death we cry, in life we did not help!”

Confusion

Before his death Tati had plans for at least one more film. Confusion, a planned collaboration with pop duo Sparks
Sparks (band)
Sparks is an American rock and pop band formed in Los Angeles in 1968 by brothers Ron and Russell Mael , initially under the name Halfnelson...

, was a story about a futuristic city (Paris) where activity is centred around television, communication, advertising, and modern society's infatuation with visual imagery. In the original script an ageing Mr. Hulot was slated to be accidentally killed on-air. Ron Mael
Ron Mael
Ronald David Mael , is an American musician and songwriter. He and his younger brother Russell, make up the pop duo Sparks.Ron Mael was born in Culver City, California. Ron plays keyboard and writes most of the songs for Sparks...

 and Russell Mael
Russell Mael
Russell Mael is an American singer and songwriter who, with his older brother Ron, is in the band Sparks....

 would have played two American TV studio employees brought to a rural French TV company to help them out with some American technical expertise and input into how TV really is done.. While the script still exists, Confusion was never filmed.What would have been its title track, “Confusion” appears on Sparks 1976 Big Beat
Big Beat (album)
- 21st Century Edition :- Personnel :* Russell Mael - Vocals* Ron Mael - Keyboards* Sal Maida - Bass* Jeffrey Salen - Guitar* Hilly Boy Michaels - Drums* Rupert Holmes - Production* Jeffery Lesser - Production...

album with the internal sleeve of its 2006 re-mastered CD featuring a letter announcing the pending collaboration as well as a photo of the Mael brothers in conversation with Tati

The Illusionist

The Illusionist (2010) is an animated film based on an unproduced, semi-autobiographical script that Tati wrote in 1956. Directed by Sylvain Chomet
Sylvain Chomet
Sylvain Chomet is a French comic writer, animator and film director.- Early career :Born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, near Paris, he studied art at high-school until he graduated in 1982. Chomet moved to London in 1988 to work as an animator at the Richard Purdum studio...

, known for The Triplets of Belleville, the main character is an animated caricature of Tati himself.

Controversy has dogged The Illusionist. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

reports,
In 2000, the screenplay was handed over to Chomet by Tati's daughter, Sophie, two years before her death. Now, however, the family of Tati's illegitimate and estranged eldest child, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel, who lives in the north-east of England, are calling for the French director to give her credit as the true inspiration for the film. The script of L'illusionniste, they say, was Tati's response to the shame of having abandoned his first child [Schiel] and it remains the only public recognition of her existence. They accuse Chomet of attempting to airbrush out their painful family legacy again.


Tati's former colleagues at the Lido de Paris were appalled at his caddish behaviour and shunned him. As a result he moved first to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 then to the village of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre
Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre
Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre is a commune in the Indre department in central France.It is situated near the source of the Indre River. The town has a population today of approximately 899 ....

, which later inspired his hugely successful film, Jour de Fête.

Chomet has a different opinion about the film's origins although acknowledging that he "never got to meet Sophie, or even speak to her about the script." Chomet said, "I think Tati wrote the script for Sophie Tatischeff
Sophie Tatischeff
Sophie Catherine Tatischeff , was a French film editor and director.Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Tatischeff was the daughter of Jacques Tati and began her career as assistant editor on her father's film Play Time...

. I think he felt guilty that he spent too long away from his daughter when he was working."

Although Pathe Pictures appear to contradict Chomet's view with its own summary that,
"The film is based on an unproduced script that the French mime, director and actor Jacques Tati had written in 1956 as a personal letter to his estranged eldest daughter, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel in collaboration with long term writing partner Henri Marquet between Mon Oncle and Playtime. The main character is an animated version of Tati animated by Laurent Kircher. The plot revolves around a struggling illusionist who visits an isolated community and meets a young lady who is convinced that he is a real magician. The film is set in Scotland in the late 1950s. "...It's not a romance, it's more the relationship between a dad and a daughter...."

Director

  • L'École des facteurs
    L'École des facteurs
    School for Postmen is a 1947 French short comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail. The film includes several sight gags that involve his bicycle...

    (1947) (short film)
  • Jour de fête
    Jour de fête
    Jour de fête is the title of a film comedy by the French director Jacques Tati. Jour de fête tells the story of an inept and easily distracted French mailman who frequently interrupts his duties to converse with the local inhabitants, as well as inspect the traveling fair that has come to his...

    (1949)
  • Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953)
  • Mon Oncle
    Mon Oncle
    Mon Oncle is a 1958 film comedy by French filmmaker Jacques Tati. The first of Tati's films to be released in colour, Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign...

    (1958)
  • Play Time (1967)
  • Trafic
    Trafic
    Trafic is a 1971 comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Trafic was the last film to feature Tati's famous character of Monsieur Hulot, and followed the vein of earlier Tati films that lampooned modern society.-synopsis:...

    (1971)
  • Parade
    Parade (film)
    Parade was the final film directed by Jacques Tati. It was made for television and featured Tati as a clown in a circus. The film was screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition....

    (1974)
  • Forza Bastia
    Forza Bastia
    Forza Bastia is a 26-minute film documenting a UEFA Cup match between PSV Eindhoven and French club SC Bastia at the Furiani Stadium in 1978. Jacques Tati directed the piece at the request of friend Gilberto Trigano – the President of the Bastia club at that time...

    (1978) (short film)

Actor

  • Oscar, champion de tennis (1932)
  • On demande une brute (short film) (1934)
  • Gai dimanche
    Gai dimanche
    Gai Dimanche is a 1935 three reel film written by and starring Jacques Tati and his friend Rhum. The pair star as down-and-outs who try to generate funds by providing an impromptu leisure tour in a rickety bus they wangle use of for free...

    (short film) (1935)
  • Soigne ton gauche (short film) (1936)
  • Retour à la terre (short film) (1938)
  • Sylvie et le fantôme
    Sylvie et le fantôme
    Sylvie et le fantôme is a 1946 French film directed by Claude Autant-Lara.-Plot:Sylvie is fascinated by the portrait of long dead Alain de Francigny and she is upset when her father, Baron Eduard, is forced to sell the painting. The Baron hires an actor to appear as Alain's ghost on the eve of...

    (1946)
  • Le Diable au corps (1947)
  • L'École des facteurs
    L'École des facteurs
    School for Postmen is a 1947 French short comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail. The film includes several sight gags that involve his bicycle...

    (short film) (1947)
  • Jour de fête
    Jour de fête
    Jour de fête is the title of a film comedy by the French director Jacques Tati. Jour de fête tells the story of an inept and easily distracted French mailman who frequently interrupts his duties to converse with the local inhabitants, as well as inspect the traveling fair that has come to his...

    (1949)
  • Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953)
  • Mon Oncle
    Mon Oncle
    Mon Oncle is a 1958 film comedy by French filmmaker Jacques Tati. The first of Tati's films to be released in colour, Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign...

    (1958)
  • Cours du soir
    Cours du soir
    Cours du Soir is a thirty-minute short film in which Jacques Tati demonstrates the art of mime to a group of enthusiastic students. Amongst skits performed are those of a tennis player and a horse rider – sketches that initially brought Tati acclaim on music hall stages in the 1930s. Nicolas...

    (short film) (1967)
  • Play Time (1967)
  • Trafic
    Trafic
    Trafic is a 1971 comedy film directed by Jacques Tati. Trafic was the last film to feature Tati's famous character of Monsieur Hulot, and followed the vein of earlier Tati films that lampooned modern society.-synopsis:...

    (1971)
  • Obraz uz obraz (TV series) (1972)
  • Parade
    Parade (film)
    Parade was the final film directed by Jacques Tati. It was made for television and featured Tati as a clown in a circus. The film was screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition....

    (1974)

Awards

  • Cannes festival 1958: Grand prix for Mon Oncle
  • Academy Awards 1958
    31st Academy Awards
    The telecast of the 31st Academy Awards is among the most infamous. The show’s producer Jerry Wald started cutting numbers from the show to make sure it ran on time. Unfortunately, he cut too much material and the ceremony ended 20 minutes early, leaving Jerry Lewis to attempt to fill in the time...

    : Best Foreign Language Film for Mon Oncle

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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