Jacques Tati

Guide Note

French filmmaker and actor, Jacques Tati, directed only six feature films, but his comedic ingenuity inspired a generation of actors, from Jerry Lewis to Jackie Gleason.

Tati began his career as a rugby player, then moved to honing his comedy skills as a mime in the French cabarets. His first feature film, 1949's Jour de fête {The Big Day) centered around a bumbling postman with heroic ambitions and was honored for Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival. Tati played the postman himself, infusing the role with the largely silent physical comedy style he developed in the cabarets. However, it was his next film, the Academy Award nominated Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday), that brought to life Tati's best known character, Monsieur Hulot. M. Hulot had very little dialogue in any of Tati's films, playing a silent everyman in a tan trench coat who is overwhelmed by modern technology. Tati used this character with mixed success in his next three films. In 1958 the exploits of M. Hulot in the big city, entitled Mon Oncle (My Uncle), won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. However, 1967's Play Time, considered by some to be Tati's masterpiece, was a commercial flop. Tati appeared never to fully recover from this financial setback, making only two more much smaller films, Trafic (Traffic) and Parade, before passing away in 1982 at the age of 75.

In 2008, director Sylvain Chomet, famous for the Triplets of Belleville, announced that he would be making Tati's nearly forgotten script, The Illusionist. Expect The Illusionist in theatres sometime in 2009.

Fast Facts

1. Born: October 9, 1907
2. Died: November 5, 1982
3. Hometown: Le Pecq, France
4. Birth name: Jacques Tatischeff
5. Number 46 on Entertainment Weekly's list of greatest directors

1. Then I made Soigne ton Gauche, a film related to my sporting disappointments which allowed me to discover a comic character - the postman - who was something of a novelty at the time in French Cinema.
2. Playtime is the big leap, the big screen. I'm putting myself on the line. Either it comes off or it doesn't. There's no safety net.