sylvain chomet's upcoming tribute to jacques tati

I know, my obsession with Tati has no end, but when you hear that the director of the amazing Triplets of Belleville has recently completed a film, entitled The Illusionist, based on an unfinished screenplay by the French comic master my mouth gets a little wet around the edges.

Though I can't believe that Hulot will actually appear in the film, the main character, an aging magician fumbling his way through the changes in modern France, is based on the bumbling everyman.  Look at that stance, the way he spins a cane!  Hulot, he lives again.

Color me excited.

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criterion counsel: i have fallen asleep the last three nights and the dvd has spun it's way to a similarly blaring big band dance scene each night.  last night i got a little further in the film though and couldn't be more excited.  it has that feel of a great caper flick - the team, the plan, the heist - but all turned on its merry head.

PLAYTIME (112)

The Film: Playtime (112)
The Director: Jacques Tati (M. Hulot's Holiday (110), Mon Oncle (111))

What It Is:  The most ambitious, in my humble opinion, of Tati's M. Hulot Criterion-represented trifecta, Playtime (112) is yet another foray in to the bumbling bachelor's interactions with an incredibly modern France.  This go around finds M. Hulot courting a young tourist amongst technology fairs, imploding restaurants and so much more.  Quite honestly brilliant.

A Lil' Bit Of History: This is only Tati's fourth film as a director (he only made five) and it took nearly three years to shoot.  The film was shot on a massive, custom built sound stage (deemed 'Tativille') on an equally massive 70mm camera.  It's release drew critical praise, but financially it struggled to make back the enormous production costs Tati had accrued.

A Lil' Bit More History: To save money on the film, as Tati had invested a substantial bit of his own cashola in to the film, many of the background sets are actually just enormous photos.

The Expectation: Brilliance, exponentially compounding brilliance.

The Experience: It's been a sort of wild week of film, what with Mon Oncle (111) sliding down the hatch last week, House this weekend, and then a madcap rendezvous with this fantastic film over the course of the last three days.  I've taken to early morning film watching, with the Criterion Conquistador snoozing besides me, and after a failed attempt to work this morning, I came back and blissfully slipped in to Tativille and all that it entailed.

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1.  Stunning

Over the course of the last month of Tati immersion, I've found myself more and more drawn to the director's ability to imbue scenes full of extras and set pieces with a sort of lonely sparseness.  Tati, in a gentle way, was at war with the idea of creeping modernity, and in each of his films, especially Mon Oncle (111) and this film, the scenes of hustle and bustle are projected as insincere, almost draining.  Yet Playtime (112), amongst it's subtle humor and sadness, is a stunning display of monochromatics.  Grey, black and white dominate most of the film, and my oh my, does Tati do a brilliant job of painting a stunning visage of a 1960s-style automated future.  The opening scene in an airport almost choked me up it was so attractive, and the film just snowballs in terms of cinematography from that point forth.  Tati's been referred to as a master of 'mise-en-scene' and Playtime (112) certainly proves that.

2.  Hulot as a character, not a lead.

Before doing any research on the film, you'll watch Playtime (112) and scratch your head, briefly, wondering where Tati's M. Hulot actually is.  The film, amazing nonetheless, is decidedly lacking M. Hulot. The trenchcoated gentlemen appearing infrequently and for only short intervals.  Though the film doesn't suffer a lick from his absence, there is reason to Tati's Hulot-less madness: he was tired of the character.  By the time Playtime (112) rolled around, Tati was more interested in lambasting the modern France he lived in than starring in the films he made.  The character of M. Hulot was so popular in France though, that he couldn't disconnect completely without losing a sizable bit of his audience.  Thus, Playtime (112) appears to be a Hulot film, but truthfully he's just another part of the crowd.  Luckily, Tati's films have always relied on a sort of communal feel, where Hulot exists as a important part, a softly lobbed pipe bomb, but never dominates the film.  His fleeting appearance in this film seem only a part of the general malaise towards city life and all its abysmal traits.

3.  Hulot's lacking pt. 2

That said, even if Tati pulled his beloved character to focus more on his true love - directing - Hulot's disappearance in the film seems to fit right at home in the Hulot-quartet (the final film being Trafic (439)).  Through each film we learn more about the character of M. Hulot (his family, his jobs, his aversion to technology) and in each film we're pulled more and more in to the modern world Tati creates.  Where M. Hulot's Holiday (110) finds M. Hulot a central character in a beach-side vacation town, Mon Oncle (111) finds him a bumbling uncle in a town slowly being consumed by rampant consumerism, and finally Playtime (112) finds him a wary visitor to a super-modern city.  And each film he's less and less involved in the actual plot, as if Hulot as a character disassociates more and more with the all-consuming advent of technology.  He's just got a pipe, an umbrella and a penchant for comical disaster, and the wild world of chugging cars and shiny glass windows isn't his place.  His bumbling lack of direction never has seemed so poignant, as the big, glowing city nearly swallows him up.

4.  Big, big, and bigger.

Tati literally built a city for this film and it's not even the biggest thing about it.  The near forty-minute Royal Garden scene is one of the largest, longest, most impressive set pieces created in the history of film.  With no Hulot in site, we the audience are invited in to the opening night festivities of entirely too-new upscale restaurant.  Everything, everything, quite quickly goes to shit, and the appearance of M. Hulot, an uproarious jazz band and a host of drunkards pushes right over the edge.  It's almost like a giant version of Where's Waldo where each time you look you find a new sight gag taking place, a new character to fixate on, a new explosion to giggle at.  It wanes and grows and swells and fluctuates in a way scenes, let alone films, just don't anymore. 

Last Words: Brilliant.  Mouth-watering.  Stunning. I can't write more about this film.  On a superficial level it's an achievement unequaled today.  Dig deeper though and this is a film rife with deep thoughts on technology, city life, the way we as a society are slowly losing ourselves to machines.  Playtime (112) is a film sixty years ahead of it's time, and anyone with a love for film needs to repeatedly lose themselves in it.

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Criterion Counsel:  Gasping at the Tati-less near future, but excited as hell for whatever might come next.

watch these: michel gondry's semi-new video & an amazing trailer about tiny furniture

quick posts for a quick day.

seeing two films back-to-back today.  films that might actually enable me to love modern cinema again.  not cry myself to sleep after the barrage of badness i was subject to last week.  apologies to the criterion conquistador for dragging her along.

cheech marin should never be a priest.

for your enjoyment:

a trailer by science of sleep director michel gondry for a video by big-voiced crooner mia doi todd's track "open your heart."  not my favorite song, but the gondry's childlike sense of color always strikes me as particularly unique in it's sort of rag-tag simplicity.

i wonder if he's a giggling school boy in person.  i hope so.


Mia Doi Todd "Open Your Heart" dir. Michel Gondry from Viewers Like You on Vimeo.

and this, a new trailer for lena durham's second feature, tiny furniture.  aesthetically, she's a real beaut, but i worry that the content of the film might be a hodge-podge mix-up of woody allen, wes anderson, and every other new york director of the last five years.

not a clue though.  not even a small one.


Tiny Furniture Trailer from Lena Dunham on Vimeo.

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criterion counsel: started the jacque tati's third film in the criterion collection the other day and have been wet at the corners of my mouth in excitement to grab another peek.  i'm thinking the whole film done by tonight or tomorrow.  lofty i know.

tati talk

I know it seems as if I'm obsessively posting about the master of French silent comedy, Jacques Tati lately, but I've been deeply immersed in his works over the last, sigh, two or months.  Each layer I pull up just reveals another facet of how talented this director/comedian was, and how in contrast to the American comedies of the time, his sweet, near-ambient films were.

Mind my obsession, it will fade soon as Playtime (112) sadly, so sadly comes to an end.

Here, a smattering of trailers and clips that will give you just a hint at why I obsess ...

monsieur hulot you will not smoke

Not exactly current news, but the French, stringent observers of taste and culture that they are put the kibosh on the iconic pipe of one M. Hulot last year, decorating posters of the befuddled comedian with yellow sparks over his signature smoking vessel.

Aghast you disrespecting Frenchies you.

The crime (quite punishable if you ask me) in question:

An explanation:

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Criterion Counsel:  Soon my friends, soon.

MON ONCLE (111)

The Film: Mon Oncle (111)
The Director: Jacques Tati (M. Hulot's Holiday (110), Playtime (112))

What Is It: The second in Criterion's three-disc set of all things Jacques Tati.  Tati was, and continues to be posthumously, a renowned comedic director and actor.  The moustached director used his character M. Hulot (a sort of bumbling everyman) to poke and prod at the machinations of the post-war French government.  In Mon Oncle (111) we find M. Hulot breaking and bumbling his way through the post-war consumerism that, ahem, consumed France in the wake of World War II.  There's post-modern houses, oil spewing fish statues, and a slew of oddly dressed socialites.

A Lil' Bit of History: On its release, Mon Oncle (111) was, to a degree, critically reviled as many of the to-do critics at the time saw is un-patriotic in its depiction of a France awash with needless spending and industry.  This lasted only as long as the film wallowed in the shadows, barely weeks before the international press rejoiced, awarding it the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, amongst others.

The Expectation:  Another spot-on, darling romp from a master of French cinema I'd previously been un-hip to.

The Experience:  I started a business with the Criterion Conquistador and our good friend Dartanyan, thus this film was lost in the cracks for a long while.  It may have been almost a month, or longer since I started the film, but in the wee hours of the morning today I crossed the Mon Oncle (111) finish line.

1.  Subversion in the silliest way.

M. Hulot is as subversive as a pipe bomb thrown through a storefront.  Yes, the nattily dressed everyman, seems only to fumble his way through each and every set piece, in his gentle manner he's flipping an enormous bird to all the rumbling mechanics of the French government.  The scene: a provincial town in France slowly being consumed by the shining metal of the post-modern consumerism.  M. Hulot stays at his brother-in-law's Jetson like house, rife with automated switches and stark interiors.  Over the course of the film, Hulot interacts with the beacons of the upper-crust, a series of stuffed-shirt CEOs and other fans of the rampant consumerism.  Never does Hulot aggressively poke fun, he just lives his life, a simple polite existence, and everything else just looks absurd in comparison. Throw in a town full of the sort of smiley drunks and working class individuals Tati populates all his films with and this is muted attack on French aristocracy.

2.  Monsieur Arpel

No one speaks a great deal in the films of Jacque Tati.  He's a master of painting a scene and allowing the physical aspects of comedy run amok.  But Monsieur Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola) is even less need of words.  He is a sausage of a man, squeezed in to expensive suits, an almost physical representation of all things wealthy.  He forces himself in to boat-like cars, his sheer bulk echoing the needless spending he's obviously a perpetrator of.  As I watched the film this morning I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

3.  So simple and quiet.

I can't imagine an American film in the 1950s that could exist without the influx of constant chatter.  Yes, some of the Westerns at the time dilly-dallied with silence equaling strength, but Tati creates a world where conversation is background noise, an ambient addition that helps highlight the proceedings at hand (most likely M. Hulot absent-mindedly breaking something).  Characters speak (more so in Mon Oncle (111) than M. Hulot's Holiday (110)) but what they say means nothing, instead we as an audience are lost in the simple sound effects, the scene composition, the spewing blue liquid of a broken fish.  I found myself bored at first when watching these films, and I imagine anyone beaten down with the sort of slam-bam filmmaking of the US of A would be, but allow yourself to slide in to the world Tati creates.  It's not big and bold but nonetheless all-inclusive.  A slighty, silly bit of existence that might not make you laugh out loud, but will linger in your mind on the bus, on a walk, on the vertiginous edge of sleep.

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Criterion Counsel:  Riding high after completing a film.  Trying to finish off Playtime (112) the third and last Tati film in the days to come.  Wish me luck ardent readers, I've needed it lately.  

A very elegant dog.

"Some women would have done anything to have one of these dogs. They were distributed all over Paris. One settled down in the very chic Avenue du Bois. He was a very elegant dog. Another ended up with a little retired man in a suburban house in Asniere."

- Jacques Tati, director, on the dogs of Mon Oncle (111)

The only one to blame.

"I can assure you that in this film I did everything I wanted to do.  If you don't like it, I'm the only one to blame."

              -  Jacques Tati, director, on his film Mon Oncle (111)

The story up to now ...

In the last two months, these things have happened:

1.  I quit my long-time job at Light In The Attic Records in the hopes that I could focus on my own projects.  This created the near perfect situation where I work for barely three days a week, still managed to live in a fantastic part of the city, and had four days to focus on my true loves: films, films, and films. 

2.  Literally a week after deciding that LITA was no longer the home I wanted to have, I received an email from another blog I write for informing me that with the lightest flick of the wrist I would now be on a screener list for the greater San Francisco area.  This would mean that nearly any and all films that opened on the big screen in my area, the Yay Area, I would be invited to, sans payment, to reflect upon and then review.  Life long goal accomplished.  Pop the bubbles, turn on the hottub, cook up a steak.

3.  For the last three, maybe four weeks, I've literally been immersed in film.  I worried at first that because of Side One: Track One's smallish readership that perhaps I would only be invited to the films that every outlet was allowed.  Or even worse I be shuffled in to side theaters to see made-for-television melodramas and focus group discussions.  As I often do when presented with anxiety, I started knockin' on doors to make sure that all was right and the floodgates were open for Hurricane Noah to slide through.  I've been sending emails, by the bucket full, to those in charge of screeners to make sure that the films that are being released each and every week are being viewed ... by me.  My first week I saw three films, then two, films and now steadily, for the last two I've seen four films a week, sometimes two a day.  A literal engorgement of cinema.  I'm bloated, but Jesus, if this isn't the life for me.

You can follow my reviews, for the moment at Side One: Track One, and I'll surely be linking to each and every film as I review them.

4.  On top of that, my beautiful Criterion Conquistador has started a new business involving the excavation and sale of dead people's effects.  The talented lady, and her equally talented business partner are in all engines go mode and as a diligent supporter (and infatuated follower) I've been assisting as much as possible.  Eleven hours spent amidst Jesus paraphernalia and rat shit, as you might imagine, can be a bit exhausting.

5.  Thus my Quest, my sweet sweet Quest, has fallen behind a bit.  I've been festooned amongst Jacque Tati's near-silent masterworks for weeks now, and with four films bubbling up on the horizon and a trip to San Luis Obispo and, and, and ... well, lets just say it might be a while.  But in the meantime, as I've said recently and frequently, this blog will continue, and for god's sake it will be more about film and my increasing love for it, than ever before.


Stay with me people.  Stay with me.

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Criterion Counsel: Have spent the last three days watching Manhattan.  The French must be put on hold when Manhattan comes a-callin'.