Cinema: Spend le week-end with Jacques Tati

Published on Friday 13 November 2009 18:03

ONE of the greatest cinematic love affairs of the past half-century has been between British film fans and an angular, accident-prone beanpole of a Frenchman named Monsieur Hulot.

Jacques Tati's iconic character has been tickling the funnybones of filmgoers since M Hulot's Holiday in 1953, a love-affair celebrated at this year's French Film Festival with a retrospective of all of Tati's screen work.

Tati only made a handful of films, but they have left a lasting impression on generations of viewers. His admirers have included Orson Welles, David Lynch, Steven Spielberg and Belleville Rendez-vous creator Sylvain Chomet, who is currently transforming a previously unfilmed Tati script into an animated film.

Tati's brilliance as a comedy actor has also influenced at least two generations of comedians, including John Cleese, Paul Merton and Rowan Atkinson – who described seeing M Hulot's Holiday as "a defining moment in my life" (and paid homage to it in his 2007 film Mr Bean's Holiday) – all owe a debt to Tati's very physical comedy style. But what is it about Tati that makes him so well-loved – even by viewers who wouldn't ordinarily go to see a foreign film?

The main reason has to be his "Everyman" appeal. Tati created easily identifiable types whom everyone can recognise from their own experience – including the postman who takes himself and his work too seriously in his 1949 film Jour de Fte, and the eager-to-please social misfit M Hulot, who creates chaos out of order and is baffled by the technological trappings of modern life.

M Hulot's fellow holidaymakers would fit in to Fawlty Towers as comfortably as they do the Htel de la Plage. There's the veteran soldier who drones on about his wartime experiences and the meek, middle-aged husband who is always several steps behind his banality-spouting spouse ("Oh, there's another boat … and another … oh!").

The physicality of Tati's humour makes it universal. Tati said that the way a comic actor used his legs was paramount, and he used his to maximum comedy effect, mixing loping strides with hesitant little shuffles as he tries to ingratiate himself into new people's company. Physically, M Hulot is every bit as recognisable – even in silhouette – as Charlie Chaplin's iconic Little Tramp.

The characteristic Hulot pose is of him tilting forward, with his head at a quizzical angle, his hat tipped over his eyes, ubiquitous pipe at a right angle to his long nose, his arms bent behind him with his hands resting on his hips. Like Chaplin's alter ego, he always wears the same kit – trousers not quite long enough, a Tyrolean-esque hat and stripy socks. He walks with a lolling gait, on well-sprung tiptoes, a French cousin of Basil Fawlty.

Tati's background as a mime meant he was most at home devising visual gags. Terry Gilliam, part of the Monty Python team and now a film director, has said: "One of Tati's great qualities is that his films contain almost no dialogue. I find this particularly brilliant – these divinely French films that create no problem when it comes to subtitling. In terms of dialogue, Monty Python learnt everything from Tati. We owe everything to him."

Tati's films feature soundtracks of exaggerated, cartoon-like noises which heighten the effect of the visual comedy – the putt, putt, putt of M Hulot's old jalopy as it chugs along the road, the be-doinngg of the restaurant door as the motley crew of hotel guests assembles for lunch.

Tati's humour works on a number of levels. There's the obvious, laugh-out-loud slapstick sequences, which appeal enormously to children, but also beautifully observed, often whimsical details quietly unfolding in a corner of the screen. It pays to see Tati's films in the cinema, as so much happens in the background – and he actively avoided filming close-ups. As Orson Welles said: "There are performers who are only good in full figure. Move in on Tati and he literally disappears."

Of course, the films also appeal to anyone with a fondness for France and the French way of life. They celebrate the quaint, the eccentric and a lifestyle which Tati saw being replaced by a faster, more consumer and technology-driven one. Jour de Fte and M Hulot's Holiday are lovely to look at, since they are set in unspoilt rural France, and they move at such a leisurely pace that you can soak up the detail of both the comedy and the setting.

Terry Jones, another Monty Python graduate, has said of Tati: "He was a visual genius. His films, without being silent, all have the qualities, the beauty and the richness of silent film."

Even by the time he made his third film, Mon Oncle (1958), Tati was beginning to show signs of self-indulgence in his work. His subsequent films – PlayTime (1967), Trafic (1971) and Parade (1973) – are reviled and revered in equal measure. But Jour de Fte and M Hulot's Holiday are perfect comedies that showcase Tati's comedy at its most pure – and most appealing.

&#149 The Totally Tati retrospective begins at Glasgow Film Theatre and the Filmhouse, Edinburgh, tomorrow as part of the French Film Festival. Full details online at: www.frenchfilm festival.org.uk. The BFI is releasing a new box set of five Tati films in November.