An Overview of Jacques Tati’s works

The God of Small Things

Amir Siadat

Jonathan Rosenbaum has an intriguing memory of working with Jacques Tati. One day he goes to meet Tati at the restaurant located downstairs from Tati`s office, but no matter how long he waits, Tati does not show up. Rosenbaum waits for a while, then he goes to Tati's office and returns to the restaurant desperately and finds out that Tati has been sitting behind a table watching him all this time! In fact, he was having fun with Rosenbaum’s confusion! The image that this memory creates is so much of Tati's simple and subtle jokes that it can be imagined as a sequence of his films. The fact that a filmmaker is sitting in a corner and is catching a critic in a ridiculous situation with his imaginary frames, adds to the humor of the "scene" and gives it an ironic tone (Tati probably laughed at the confusion and bewilderment of the critics encountering his works, too!). However, everyone already has the capacity to be in his frame. Let's remember the opening scene of Playtime: At first glance, it is not possible to say where that ultra-modern space with that limited coloring is. Before we find out that it is an airport, we may mistake it for a hospital! One or two men who are moving in the background with hats and raincoats mislead us for a second; We think that they are Monsieur Hulot, but they are not. We don not know what exactly we should look for and focus on, facing with the airport shots, where there are lots of things to see! like some people in the film, who are stuck and do not know which way to go, we find ourselves confused and lost. It seems that Tati has stuck us in a ridiculous situation same as Rosenbaum! Monsieur Hulot, Tati's familiar character, is a polished, disciplined and organized man, so organized as if the outside world is bound to coordinate its inherently random and irregular events with the rhythm of his movements: every time he wants to put his brush into the paint can, the waves of the sea accidentally place the can floating on the beach where it should be. At the dining table, every time he wants to take the salt shaker, his coat sleeve instead of a napkin, wipes the mouth of the customer next to him. Children consider his self-made method in tennis as a regular method and apply it in ping pong. Tati's cinema, like that Monsieur Hulot, is elegant and disciplined and based on a rare rhythm and regularity, which is carefully and meticulously pre-designed and calculated. He arranges his frames in such a way that the viewer finds the routine movement of an employee in his wheelchair as a ridiculous foot dance, or considers serving of drinks by a waiter as watering the flowers on a lady's hat! The order of stylistic elements in Tati's cinema has a role equal to that of narration, and perhaps is more vital than that. The system of geometric units and lines and volumes (partitions and walls, lampposts, skyscrapers, passage lines, the abundance of similar objects in the width or depth of a shot, etc.) in frame by frame of Playtime, needless of the requirements of the narration and expansion of the plot, are presenting a new approach that seems to have a lot of similarities to the visual arts of its time (for example, minimalistic works based on symmetry and consisting of repeated geometric units). However, Tati's cinema - just like Monsieur Hulot – is causing disturbance, while adhering to order. In Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, the hotel guests look at Monsieur Hulot as a nuisance since the first encounter, because upon his arrival, a strong wind blew, messed everything up, and disturbed their usual order. Tati established principles that were not known, and if one wanted to measure his works by classical standards, he would find them irregular and abnormal. The classical form brings all the elements to the service of the narrative system, but he was inclined to non-narrative. He was style-oriented and disruptive, and it did the same thing to the audience that was accustomed to the conventional patterns as that storm did to the hotel guests. In a scene from Playtime, we see travel advertising posters to different cities in the world, all of which are ironically similar. In all the posters, the city is lost behind the skyscrapers. All the cities have become American. Tati was looking for "distinction" in this unified world and didn’t want his cinema to become American, and this couldn’t be achieved except with a revolution in the form.

Monsieur Hulot is like children, and not stubborn and spoiled ones. On the contrary, he’s completely obedient and submissive. He’s like a child who tries to deal with the world of elders but fails. Although he tends to create order, his every action unintentionally leads to disorder: at the same time that he’s busy straightening a painting on the front wall with one hand, the movement of the riding stick in the other hand tilts another painting on the wall behind him. In order to repair a decorative shrub, he decides to break a broken branch from one side of it, but by mistake, he crushes several other branches two by two. While walking in the yard, he likes to step on the big and round stones in the grass like others, but in the middle of the way, he mistakes the round and wide leaves inside the pond for stones and accidentally enters the water. He carefully places his bicycle in the marked area in front of the factory, not knowing that this is exactly where the boss parks his car every day! He wants to respect the rules and follow the principles, but he doesn't know how. His simplistic world makes us laugh as we might laugh to imprudence of a child. At first glance, Hulot's confusion in his sister's ultra-modern kitchen and his clumsy behavior in the face of the fully automatic equipment evoke Modern Times. If the machine has enslaved Chaplin and made him a robot that won’t let go of wrench and sees everything as bolts and nuts, and is about to be lost among the piles of huge gears, Monsieur Hulot stands on the edge of the machine world. Even if he wants to, he cannot settle or harmonize with such a world. The design of that strange car in Traffic tells of his attempt to be similar to the industrial world, but his invention is apparently suitable for everything except driving! He eventually fails to ride the car to the Amsterdam exhibition, and decides to open up his umbrella and walk under the rain and become the same old Monsieur Hulot! In front of him, we see people stuck in traffic as if their own human engine has been turned off when their cars stop. They’re constantly yawning, dozing, and shaking their heads in harmony with the regular movements of windscreen wipers. They have become machines, like Chaplin. Like many others, Tati has lost his city during the modern era. Paris in Playtime is a city where glass and metal are multiplied and the airport, hospital, cafe and pharmacy are not significantly different from each other in terms of shape and architecture. Even its people are similar. They have multiplied like all the elements around them. Even Monsieur Hulot is not an exception! His counterfeit copies can be seen many times all over this place of reproduction and repetition! The city we are watching in Playtime is ridiculous, even without Monsieur Hulot. Therefore, when he’s not present in the frames for a relatively long time, we don't feel his absence much. What should tourists observe in such a city? What do they want to take a picture of? We see Eiffel twice; The first time in the depths of the frame, faded, and the second time reflected in the huge building windows, as if nothing of it has remained, but a ghost. Everywhere is cold and gray and people have become the same color as the surrounding buildings. In the night sequence of the restaurant, which is the moment when the strict orders and formality of everyday life is suspended and people are freed from shackles and actually it is their playtime, happy colors enter the world of the film with the customers of the restaurant one by one until finally in the final images and the carousel-like movement of colorful cars, the city archives to a balance. Having said that, Tati's problem is not the machine, but the mechanical life, devoid of joy and euphoria. The temporary departure from the established order and the constant honoring of entertainment and carnival-like passion in his works can be traced from The Big Day and Monsieur Hulot's Holiday to his latest film Parade - which is an interesting documentary about the circus. In a scene from My Uncle, the mischievous children secretly hit the cars that are moving slowly behind each other so that the drivers quarrel with one another thinking that they have had an accident. One of the drivers, who finds out about the children’s plan, informs the rest, unaware that the “guy” standing behind the camera does not give up so easily! So, just when the drivers' minds are relieved about the collision, two cars collide - this time for real - but the drivers continue to drive with the idea that this collision is of the children`s mischief! The children mess with the elders and Tati, who dislikes the hypocritical worlds and mechanical life of the elders, accompanies them. The childish Monsieur Hulot does not get along with adults and is a good friend to children and quickly attracts their love. In Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, a child excitedly shows him to his father: "Look! Monsieur Hulot!"

Adults are hypocritical. In My Uncle, all they think about is who to open the fountain of their pond for! They have made a showcase of their life to attract attention (apartments in Playtime are practically no different from a showcase). Monsieur Hulot and his niece have nothing to do with the relations of this house. The two of them, and the rest of the children, rush to help Tati to discredit the adults' hypocritical policy, a kind of cinema with a childish mood, which is not wrong if we interpret the obvious tendency to reduce the language and replace the image in it as a desire to return to the pre-symbolic stage of childhood. Remember Monsieur Hulot's house in that non-modern neighborhood where human relations are flowing, warm and relaxed. Isn't this dreamy house and neighborhood too cartoony? The animation The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet) may bring tears to Tati lovers. This bitter animation is as much related to Tati cinema as Tati cinema is connected to animation. The Illusionist whose screenplay was written by Tati, has a narrow story with insignificant ups and downs, which can be summed up to Tatischeff, a middle-aged magician, performing in the music halls of France and Scotland and his acquaintance with a young girl named Alice and finally parting ways of this two. Many of the gags in this animation have Tati's foorprint: a strong wind blows, the feathers that an old woman has gathered in the outdoor area fly into the air, Alice from behind the window thinks the feathers are snow and feels cold; A depressed man has a rope around his neck and is on the verge of suicide, but he prefers to see who is knocking behind the door of the room; The lone puppeteer puts his doll on the chair so that someone is facing him while he eats. Tatischeff has a clear resemblance to Hulot. He’s an honest and quiet wanderer, incompatible with the rapidly changing world, with the same short pants, the same way of walking. In addition, since his frequent presence in theaters and his skill in playing with his hands evoke Tati himself and his mastery in pantomime, it seems that the script has autobiographical echoes. In the scene where the illusionist suddenly finds himself in the middle of the cinema hall, Hulot, Tatischeff and Tati become one. The film on the screen is My Uncle and the hall - like the amphitheatres where Tatischeff performs - is almost empty of spectators. At the same time as Monsieur Hulot leaves Arpel`s Villa, Tatischeff also quietly leaves the cinema hall. If the cinema hall were full of audiences during screening of Playtime and its failure at the box office did not destroy Tati's professional life, could he not survive in the cinema? One point should not be overlooked: if the old illusionist's tricks are out of fashion in the modern age, Tati was far ahead of his time. If we have seen his films, it’s unlikely that what Elia suleiman or Roy Andersson did half a century after him surprise us.

In Songs from the Second Floor, a group of thoughtful people have gathered over a man whose hands are stuck in the train door and instead of helping him, they are talking about his unusual situation! While resonating Tati, this moment reminds the audience how much more concrete and simple Tati's ideas are. In a conversation with Andre Bazin, he himself mentions the scene of a serious man whose tie is stuck in the car door as his favorite comic situation. He was a wanderer and observer, sensitive to objects, people and movements, and he knew how to extract the funny side from everything. It is enough to look around us through his vision, so that the surrounding world with all its familiar and everyday routines will turn into a circus in our eyes. Tati's work is to rediscover this world through constructing a completely filmic geography. And the result is an image – seemingly - unnatural and removed from reality, but this image reminds us how much we are caught up in rules and conventions and immersed in pretense and formality, how comical our fake seriousness is and how ridiculous and abnormal it is what we think is normal!