Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Micheline Rolla
Defining moment: The tennis scene showcases Tati’s lumbering graceless grace to stunning effect.
Essentially a silent comedian plying his trade in the ’50s and ’60s, Jacques Tati is the iconic French Vaudeville stalwart who gifted the world with his bumbling, pipe-smoking everyman, Monsieur Hulot. Set in the mundane seaside town of Saint Marc Sur Mer, just west of Nantes, this is a simple chronicle of Hulot’s holidays that derives its humour from hundreds upon hundreds of micro-choreographed miniature moments. Though the content of Tati’s film presented him as an ardent admirer – a keeper, almost – of tradition and local custom, the bold, idiosyncratic style of his comedy showed him as a brilliant innovator of the cinematic form. The character of Hulot remained a blessing and a curse for Tati: in 1969’s ‘Playtime’, Tati removed Hulot from the action wherever possible; in the film he was intending to make before he died in 1982 – a TV station-set comedy called ‘Confusion’ co-starring Ron and Russell Mael from the band Sparks – he even intended to kill his hero off. David Jenkins
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