JACQUES TATI: A SORTA CENTENNIAL
Apr 6, 2009Paris is turning into Tativille starting tomorrow, April 8, until August 2, with the Cinémathèque française’s appropriately large-scale retrospective of the famously...
Synopsis
In Jacques Tati’s Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, outfitted as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’s highways and byways. For this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new vehicle (a camper tricked out with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’s expert timing and sidesplitting visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.
Cast
| Monsieur Hulot | Jacques Tati |
| Truck driver | Marcel Fraval |
| Director of ALTRA | Honoré Bostel |
| François | François Maisongrosse |
| Mechanic | Tony Knepper |
| Maria | Maria Kimberly |
Credits
| Director | Jacques Tati |
| Producer | Robert Dorfmann |
| Screenplay | Jacques Tati |
| with the artistic collaboration of | Jacques Lagrange |
| And the participation of | Bert Haanstra |
| Cinematography | Edward Van Den Enden and Marcel Weiss |
| Set design | Adrien De Rooy |
| Costumes | Jacques Esterel |
| Makeup | Gert Van den Bergh |
| Editing | Maurice Laumain and Sophie Tatischeff |
| Dubbing | Claude Plouganou |
| Sound | Ed Pelster and Alain Curvelier |
| Sound mixer | Jean Nény |
| Music | Charles Dumont |
| Conductor | Bernard Gérard |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot (1989), a two-hour documentary tracing the evolution of Jacques Tati’s beloved alter ego
- Interview from 1971 with the cast of Trafic, from the French television program Le journal de cinéma
- “The Comedy of Jacques Tati,” a 1973 episode from the French television program Morceaux de bravoure
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A new essay by film critic Jonathan Romney
From the Current
Trafic: Watching the Wheels
by Jul 14, 2008The usual French term for traffic—meaning the movement of motor vehicles—is la circulation. The word trafic can be a synonym for it, but its primary...
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