The Tati Box set is one of my desert island Criterions. My advice to anyone getting it is to watch all the movies in order of year of release, that way you see the evolution of Tati and particularly his Mr. Hulot character, who is the star of four of the six films. By the time you get to
PlayTime, the third Mr. Hulot film, you understand the character better and will have more insight into just how marvelous and technically astounding
PlayTime is. After I finished the Hulot arc with
Trafic, I was a bit sad knowing there were no more Hulot films to look forward to. Watching Monsieur Hulot is for me a total laugh riot, and I am certain Tati's Hulot had an influence on Peter Sellers.
The Tati set is phenomenal, and I can say that I came away from it with an even deeper appreciation for French cinema. I feel the same about the Jacques Demy set.
Tati, Demy, and Melville.... I can watch these director's movies over and over again and never get bored.
Given that I cannot pass up a chance to recommend Jacques Tati, I will repost what I wrote here over two years ago about the box set. I describe the set in relation to
Parade, his final film and the one most would consider the weakest. While that may be true, it is all relative, and I think on closer inspection
Parade deserves more praise than it generally gets.
[Show spoiler]After watching the entire Tati set in release order, I have become a huge admirer and ardent fan of Jacques Tati. His short films and movies are a wonderful homage to silent cinema. Using minimal dialogue, Tati gives us a cornucopia of hilarity, absurd situations, slapstick, and farce that entertains, thrills, and warms the heart. Tati turns a mirror onto ourselves revealing more about the human condition than most directors could ever convey using an abundance of words. There is a love of life that just spills off the screen in all of his work.
In my opinion, all the films are good to great, with the best being PlayTime, Mon Oncle, and Monsieur Hulot's Vacation. Tati's final film, Parade, is the most tonally and structurally different in the set. Parade also has the worst PQ, since it was mostly shot on video for Swedish television, but if anyone can make video look decently good, it is Criterion. The colors are surprisingly vibrant on my plasma.
Watching the films in order of release, the change in tone we experience in his final film Parade (and to a lesser extent in his second to last film Trafic) are very evident. I think this is a lingering effect from Tati's bankruptcy due to the failure of PlayTime at the box office. This is incredibly sad, because I realized after watching PlayTime that it really is a masterpiece and one of the most stunningly choreographed, complex, and amazing films ever made. I watched the special features afterward and learned that every single item in PlayTime was part of a magnificently constructed movie set, from the towering office buildings to the restaurants and shops to the city streets with their crowds and cars and buses to the dazzling interiors.....all of it was part of a carefully controlled man-made environment. Nine years in the making, nothing on such a scale had ever been attempted in France before. It was a cinematic marvel.... and a colossal commercial flop that ruined him financially. Tati's horizons were much smaller afterward when he approached Trafic and Parade.
I enjoyed Parade solely for what it is: a TV variety show featuring acrobats, jugglers, clowns, musicians, trained animals, silly skits starring Tati as himself, all with audience participation. Entertaining though it may be, it drags a bit here and there especially in the last half, and is only mildly funny. It's no Carol Burnett show (my go-to-example of a variety comedy skit show I grew up loving in the 1970s also shot on video) but in a kind of parallel universe, its heart comes from the same place. But by the time he made Parade, Tati's heart was well over 60 years old and no longer capable of filling the screen with big dreams. The charm is there, in a more intimate setting, but Parade when compared to Tati's previous films reminds me of what happens to American stars whose best days are behind them as they wind up their careers appearing nightly in Las Vegas. But for all that, the biggest let down about Parade is that I was watching Tati the variety show host and not Tati as Monsieur Hulot, a character I have developed an immense fondness for after viewing all his films. Hulot was done, and Tati would never put him on the screen again.
And then something happens right at the end of Parade that made me realize that even though this may be lesser Tati, it is still something I will always treasure as part of his works. Two little kids from the audience who can be seen throughout the film come on stage after the show is over and begin playing with the props as the actors are breaking down the sets. It is so simple a closing scene, yet so heartwarming, beautiful, and, I felt, the most absolutely perfect curtain drop on Jacques Tati's film career...... Life goes on. Another generation is coming after. And they will be inspired.
What a wonderful way to end it.
Vive Jacques Tati
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