Catamount Arts will stage a special retrospective of films by the acclaimed French comedy director, Jacques Tati. This three-day festival will run from Friday, February 5th through Sunday, February 7th.  Detailed schedule and times are at the bottom of this page.

Tati’s trademark character, M. Hulot, was as memorable as Charlie Chaplin’s tramp to many film viewers. Like Chaplin, Tati was also known to a worldwide audience, partly because his films have little or no dialogue.  But unlike Chaplin, Tati’s pictures are set in a mad but distinctly contemporary world—indeed the basis of his comedy is the goofy Hulot’s clumsy navigation of this changing landscape, marked by modern architecture, stylish cars, and a leisured class.

In “Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday” (1953), Tati’s pipe-smoking gentleman clown takes a seaside vacation where he causes one slapstick calamity after another—involving dogs, boats, firecrackers, a runaway car, a comic tennis game, a small tornado in a hotel, and more.    Film critic David Ehrenstein called “M. Hulot’s Holiday,” “one of the most original—and hilarious—comedies ever made.”

“Mon Oncle” (My Uncle—1958) is the first Tati film to use color.  The picture won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and a special prize at Cannes.  M. Hulot is again at the center of the story, this time struggling with post-war France’s growing infatuation with M. and Mme. Arpels’ modern house, equipped with an absurd number of snazzy doo-dads and “time-saving conveniences.”  The picture has been compared to Chaplin’s “Modern Times” for its view of a fish-out-of-water in the modern world.  Tati uses muted dialogue, exaggerated sound effects, and music to amplify his comedy.

In Tati’s “Playtime” (1967) the old-fashioned Mr. Hulot finds himself bewildered by a contemporary Paris that dwarfs him and others with its steel and glass, endless corridors, elevators, and air conditioners gone out of control.  But rather than simply focus on Hulot, Tati created a big cast and created a huge man-made Paris set for the most expensive French film ever made (till then).  “Instead of plot,” writes Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, “it has a cascade of incidents; instead of central characters it has a cast of hundreds; instead of being (just) a comedy it is a wondrous act of observation. It is a filmmaker showing us how his mind processes the world around him.”

In his 1971 picture, “Trafic,” Tati pokes fun at our obsession with cars and drivers.  In this film, Hulot is a designer at a modern automobile company.  His odd vehicle creation forms the basis of his comedy.  "Traffic" is about the efforts of Mr. Hulot and his fellow workers at the Altra Company,” wrote New York Times critic, Vincent Canby, “including a pushy but fondly observed American public relations girl, to get their camper car from the factory in Paris to the International Automobile Show in Amsterdam. Everything goes wrong. They run out of gas. They have flat tires. At one point they must spend a couple of days getting repairs in a small country garage set in the midst of a gigantic auto dump, which is as reassuring as going to a hospital in the middle of a cemetery.”

Catamount’s Jacques Tati festival is co-sponsored by Kingdom County Productions in conjunction with a special tour of Tati’s films organized by the French Embassy, New York, the French Consulate General of Boston, and participating sponsors including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. 

Feature Schedule

Friday, February 5                 

7:00pm            Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
9:00pm            Playtime

Saturday, February 6

7:00pm            Trafic
9:00pm            Mon Oncle

Sunday, February 7

1:00pm            Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
3:00pm            Mon Oncle
5:00pm            Trafic
7:00pm            Playtime

A SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR MEDIA SPONSOR...