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Jacques Tati |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Actor |
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1909 - 1982 |
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Born October 9, Le
Pecq, Yvelines, Seine-et-Oise, France |
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Key
Production Country: France |
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Key Genres:
Comedy, Slapstick, Satire |
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Key
Collaborators: Jacques Lagrange (Screenwriter), Fred Orain (Producer),
Henri Marquet (Screenwriter), Jean-Pierre Zola
(Leading Character Player), Jean Badal (Cinematographer), Jacques Mercanton (Cinematographer), Suzanne Baron (Editor),
Marcel Moreau (Editor), Sophie Tatischeff (Editor), Jean Yatove (Composer) |
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Highly Recommended:
Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953)*, Mon oncle (1958)*, Playtime (1967)* |
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Recommended:
L'École des facteurs (1947), Jour de Féte (1948), Traffic (1971) |
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Approach with Caution:
Parade (1974) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Tativille
] [
The
Cinema of Jacques Tati ] [
Wikipedia ] [
Jacques Tati.com ] [
The Criterion Collection ] [
Films de France ] [
New York Times Article (2008) ] |
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Books: [
Jacques
Tati: His Life and Art ] [
The
Films of Jacques Tati ] |
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"He
is one of the handful of film artists - the others would
include
Griffith,
Eisenstein,
Murnau,
Bresson
- who can be said to have transformed the medium at its most
basic level, to have found a new way of seeing... Five films
in 25 years is not an impressive record in a medium where
stature is often measured by prolificity, but Playtime
alone is a lifetime's achievement - a film that liberates
and revitalizes the act of looking at the world." -
Dave
Kehr (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991) |
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"Though
a great mime and an imaginative formal innovator, Jacques
Tatischeff was prone to simplistic social satire that
ultimately reduced his films' comic force. Indeed, it is
fascinating to note that in his attempts to reveal the way
modern technology depersonalises human existence, he should
have created a style as cold, neat and aloof in its
dependence on technique as the society he was castigating."
-
Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) |
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"His
elaborate talent for refined visual comedy was expressed
with the consistency and neatness of a great
miniaturist. But the delicacy of line and mime was
always vulgarized by humourless preoccupation with such
issues as the aridity of modern urban life. Tati's theme was
that personality is being warped by the unfeeling
organization of our times. But his art so relied on
detached, graceful views of mime that he omitted
individuality." -
David
Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
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"Actor/writer/director Tati has made few films, but they
nevertheless form a brilliant oeuvre devoted to gently poking
fun at human foibles and institutions. Tati has done some
memorable experimenting with sound in the movies." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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8- |
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"An
unlikely amalgam of
Buster Keaton and Jean-Paul Sartre,
Jacques Tati almost single-handedly kept the clowning
tradition of silent cinema alive in the age of sound, while
inventing an unlikely existential hero, Monsieur Hulot...
Tati's first masterpiece, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
(1953), introduced the world to Hulot, a human cartoon
cloaked in the uniform of the absent-minded... Hulot
appeared in nearly all Tati's subsequent films. In Mon
Oncle (1958), however, he is just one of central
figures, with his relative's modernist house and its
fiendishly inventive gadgets taking the starring role."
-
Lloyd Hughes, The Rough Guide to Film |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
Survey
of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film Journal) |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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