Jacques Tati

Parade

Parade

For his final film, Jacques Tati takes his camera to the circus, where the director himself serves as master of ceremonies. Though it features many spectacles, including clowns, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, and more, Parade also focuses on the spectators, making this stripped-down work a testament to the communion between audience and entertainment. Created for Swedish television (with Ingmar Bergman’s legendary director of photography Gunnar Fischer serving as one of its cinematographers), Parade is a touching career send-off that recalls its maker’s origins as a mime and theater performer.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1974
  • 89 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.37:1
  • French
  • Spine #731

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot, a two-part documentary from 1989 by director Jacques Tati’s daughter Sophie Tatischeff
  • In the Ring, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet about Tati’s appreciation for the circus, clowns, and mime
  • “An Homage to Jacques Tati,” a 1982 episode of the French television program Magazine featuring a tribute to Tati by his friend and set designer Jacques LaGrange
  • New English subtitle translation

Available In

Collector's Set

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Complete Jacques Tati

Blu-ray Box Set

7 Discs

$99.96

Collector's Set

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Complete Jacques Tati

DVD Box Set

12 Discs

$99.96

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot, a two-part documentary from 1989 by director Jacques Tati’s daughter Sophie Tatischeff
  • In the Ring, a 2013 visual essay by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet about Tati’s appreciation for the circus, clowns, and mime
  • “An Homage to Jacques Tati,” a 1982 episode of the French television program Magazine featuring a tribute to Tati by his friend and set designer Jacques LaGrange
  • New English subtitle translation
Parade
Cast
The Williamses
Performers
The Veterans of Paris Hockey Club
The Sipolos
Pierre Bramma
Michèle Brado
Pia Colombo
Karl Kossmayer and his mule
Norman and Ladd Hall
The Argentinos
Johnny Lonn
Bertilo
Jan Swahn
Bertil Berglund
Monica Sunnerberg
Credits
Director
Jacques Tati
Written by
Jacques Tati
Assistant director
Marie-France Siegler
Directors of photography
Jean Badal
Directors of photography
Gunnar Fischer
Cameramen
René Chabal
Cameramen
Jens Fischer
Cameramen
Bengt Nordwall
Sound recordist
Jean Nény
Editors
Sophie Tatischeff
Editors
Per Carlesson
Editors
Siv Lundgren
Editors
Jonny Mair
Editors
Aline Asséo
Artistic director
François Bronett
Music
Charles Dumont
Coproduction of
Gray Film
Coproduction of
Sveriges Radio
Coproduction of
C.E.P.E.C.
Executive producer
Louis Dolivet
Associate producer
Michel Chauvin
Line producer
Karl Haskel

Current

Jacques Tati: Things Fall Together
Jacques Tati: Things Fall Together

In cinema history, there truly is no gag like a Tati gag.

By David Cairns

Jacques Tati, Historian
Jacques Tati, Historian

Tati’s witty visual comedy also functioned as satire of a rapidly modernizing postwar France.

By Kristin Ross

Jacques Tati: Composing in Sound and Image
Jacques Tati: Composing in Sound and Image

What you hear is as crucial—and as funny—as what you see in Tati’s films.

By Jonathan Rosenbaum

Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati
Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati

Though he emerged from established stage and screen comedy traditions, Tati invented a completely new filmic language.

By James Quandt

Spontaneous Play in Parade
Spontaneous Play in Parade

Professor Kristin Thompson takes a closer look at the formal ingenuity and comic dexterity of Jacques Tati’s underappreciated final film.


A Moment with Jacques Tati

Flashbacks

A Moment with Jacques Tati

The author recalls meeting the filmmaker in a Swedish hotel in the ’70s.

By Peter Cowie

Explore

Jacques Tati

Writer, Actor, Director

Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati

It’s rare for a director’s physical appearance to be as iconic as Jacques Tati’s is. Not just the writer and director of a series of beloved French comedies—including M. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon oncle, Playtime, and Trafic—but their star, Tati embodied the befuddled, eternally umbrella-carrying and trench-coated Monsieur Hulot, perennially unable to adjust to a rapidly modernizing world, with empathy and a delightful comic precision. The latter trait was undoubtedly due to his early career as a mime in French music halls; when he switched to film, he adapted his penchant for mute comedy not only to his character but also to his directing style. There’s very little audible dialogue in Tati’s films, and their spare use of sound contributes to the overall sense they create of a forbidding, contemporary world in which Hulot feels adrift and superfluous. Add Tati’s brilliant knack for composition, expertise at choreographing deadpan slapstick, and grandiose vision (his 70 mm Playtime, one of the most expensive French productions in history to that point, bankrupted him), and you’ve got one of the most enjoyable, singular oeuvres in film.