Details by Film
Jour de fete
Black and White Original
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
1978 EditStreaming Options
Mon Oncle
Streaming Options
Playtime
Streaming Options
Trafic
Streaming Options
Parade
Streaming Options
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well-choreographed sight gags involving dogs, boats, and firecrackers; it was the first entry in the Hulot series and the film that launched its maker to international stardom.
Mon oncle
Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old- fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law, and in the antiseptic plastic hose factory where he gets a job. The second Hulot movie and Tati’s first color film, Mon oncle is a supremely amusing satire of mechanized living and consumer society that earned the director the Academy Award for best foreign-language film.
PlayTime
Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PlayTime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, PlayTime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.
Trafic
In Jacques Tati’s Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, kitted out as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’s highways and byways. In this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new product (a “camping car” outfitted with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road there is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’s expert timing and sidesplitting knack for visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.
Jour de fête
In his enchanting debut feature, Jacques Tati stars as a fussbudget of a postman who is thrown for a loop when a traveling fair comes to his village. Even in this early work, Tati was brilliantly toying with the devices (silent visual gags, minimal yet deftly deployed sound effects) and exploring the theme (the absurdity of our increasing reliance on technology) that would define his cinema.
Parade
For his final film, Jacques Tati takes his camera to the circus, where the director himself serves as master of ceremonies. Though it features many spectacles, including clowns, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, and more, Parade also focuses on the spectators, making this stripped-down work a testament to the communion between audience and entertainment. Created for Swedish television (with Ingmar Bergman’s legendary director of photography Gunnar Fischer serving as one of its cinematographers), Parade is a touching career send-off that recalls its maker’s origins as a mime and theater performer.
Tati Shorts
Jacques Tati's career, which stretched from the midthirties to the late seventies, encompasses more than just the six features for which he's best known. The charming short films he wrote or directed are essential parts of his filmography as well. Collected here, the include three wacky 1930s comedies he wrote and starred in—On demande une brute (1934)—and two later films he directed and starred in: L'école des facteurs (1946), which introduces the postman character reprised in Jour de fête, and Cours du soir (1967), made during the filming of PlayTime. We're also pleased to present Dégustation maison (1977), a César-winning short by Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff, shot in the town from Jour de fête, and Forza Bastia (1978), a soccer documentary begun by Tati and completed by Tatischeff after his death.
Release Information:
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- Original 1953 version of the film
- Introduction by actor and comedian Terry Jones
- Introduction by actor and comedian Terry Jones
- "Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot's Work," a 1976 BBC Omnibus program featuring Jacques Tati
- In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot (1969), a two-hour documentary tracing the evolution of Jacques Tati's beloved alter ego
- Two alternate versions of the film: director Jacques Tati
- New digital restorations of all seven short films: On demande une brute (1934), Gai dimanche! (1935), Soigne ton gauche (1936), L'école des facteurs (1946), Cours du soir (1967), Forza Bastia (1978), and Dégustation maison (1978)
- A booklet featuring essays by critics James Quandt, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Kristin Ross, and David Cairns
- Introduction by actor and comedian Terry Jones
- My Uncle, director Jacques Tati's 1958 reedited, English-language version of the film
- Three selected-scene commentaries, by film historian Philip Kemp, theater director Jérôme Deschamps, and Jacques Tati expert Stéphane Goudet
- Tati Story, a short biographical film about Tati
- Trailer
- In the Ring, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet about Tati
- Clear Skies, Light Breeze, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet about the debut of Monsieur Hulot
- Once Upon a Time . . . "Mon oncle," an hour-long documentary from 2008 on the making of the film's fashion, architecture, and furniture design
- Like Home, a 2013 visual essay on PlayTime by Stéphane Goudet
- Professor Goudet's Lessons, a 2013 lecture program by Stéphane Goudet on Tati's cinema
- Interview with Jacques Tati from a 1978 episode of the French television program Ciné regards
- Everything Is Beautiful, a three-part program from 2005 on the film
- "Tativille" a 1967 episode of the British television program Tempo International, featuring an interview with Jacques Tati from the set of PlayTime
- Trailer
- New interview with film composer and critic Michel Chion on Tati
- Everything's Connected, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet comparing Mon oncle to the other Monsieur Hulot films
- Beyond "PlayTime," a short 2002 documentary featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the production
- "Le Hasard de Jacques Tati," a 1977 French television episode featuring an interview with Jacques Tati about his dog, Hasard, and the canine stars of Mon oncle
- Interview from 2006 with script supervisor Sylvette Baudrot
- Audio interview with Jacques Tati from the U.S. debut of PlayTime at the 1972 San Francisco Film Festival
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Release Notes on Restoration
The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit at L.E. Diapason in Épinay-sur-Seine, France, from the two fine-grain nitrate prints used for the restoration.
The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit at L.E. Diapason in Épinay-sur-Seine, France, from the optical tracks of the two fine-grain nitrate prints used in the restoration.
The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit at L.E. Diapason in Épinay-sur-Seine, France, from the original 35mm magnetic track of the film's final sound mix.