Celebrity Biographies
Jacques Tati
He mastered the art of mime and the visual gag and took over from the greats of American and French silent cinema. He knew how to show the life of everyday people like nobody else, in memorable, timeless and fun films. Jacques Tati is a figure to claim because in recent years outside of France he has not had the consideration he deserves. And yet, he not only made the audience laugh, he also made them think. He claimed individuality and humanity in the face of progress, often absurd.
Born in Le Pecq (Yvelines) on October 9, 1907, Jacques Tatischeff is the son of Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff, who came from a Russian family, and Claire van Hoof, of Italian-Dutch origin. The young Jacques was a bad student, but a very good athlete, as he excelled in tennis and horse riding, and later in rugby, after signing for the Racing Club de France. Back then, he was amusing his teammates with his hilarious impersonations of sports figures, thus discovering his talent for comedy.
Jacques Tati recreated the world of sport when he invented his own humorous show, “Impressions sportives”. He decides to quit his job at his father’s framers company, where he had worked for a while, and embarks on the adventure of succeeding on the music-hall scene. After acting in several theaters, they ended up signing him as an actor in several films, such as Oscar, champion de tennis , or Soigne ton gauche , by René Clement.
His fledgling career as an actor was interrupted by World War II, as he was mobilized in September 1939 by the French army, which was quickly defeated. During most of the contest, he represented the aforementioned “Impressions sportives”, until he was fired from the cabaret where he worked, after impregnating a dancer, ignoring her and refusing to recognize the girl she had. He ends up marrying Micheline Winter, in 1944, and at the end of the war he resumes his acting career.
Tati’s true golden age begins when he starts directing. She had shot two shorts when she embarked on the adventure of launching her first feature film, Holiday, shot in 1947, although the results did not fully convince the distributors, so it did not reach the screens until two years later. The comedian gave free rein to his peculiar style, forged in the music hall, and along the lines of silent film slapstick, to tell the story of a postman who, during his town’s fair, sees a film that shows the sophisticated delivery methods of the mail in the United States. He decides to start up his own systems to gain speed… It was chosen for the official section of the Venice Festival, where it collected an International Award, and later it was a blockbuster. Tati had found the formula to connect with the public. One of the great hallmarks of this author is his reduction of dialogues to a minimum, and also the peculiar sounds of his films.
In his next film his most popular character would see the light. Years ago he had spent a few days off at a friend’s house by the beach in Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, and he decided that one day he would return there to shoot a movie. In this way, he went there to shoot Mr. Hulot’s Holidays , a brilliant review of the current scheduled holidays, where he plays for the first time the shy and simple protagonist, who settles in a hotel where English and Germans also spend the summer. Today on this beach, a statue of Mr. Hulot recalls the filming of the film. The filmmaker was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay.
Shortly after the premiere, Tati suffered a spectacular car accident, which left him with many sequelae, especially on his left hand. When she more or less recovered, she launched the return of Hulot, in My uncle , her most remembered film, for many reasons. For example, due to hilarious gags such as the ones in the garden spout at the technological house of the protagonist’s sister, but also due to the peculiar and catchy soundtrack by Franck Barcellini , Alain Romans and Norbert Glanzberg . And of course, for his fun and subtle criticism of modernity. It is also a claim for the right to divergence, to be different. It won the Oscar for best foreign film and the Jury Prize at Cannes.
Hulot gets lost in Paris in the excellent Play Time , which cost more than expected, due to its expensive sets, and went largely unnoticed. Tati ends up ruined, and she never recovered. Despite everything, people came up to him and told him that the film was good. “So I was right?” Tatí responded. Yes, he was right, his satire on modern package tours that stupefy tourists is still, in the 21st century, extremely topical.
Since then he has had big problems financing his films. Trafic , where he plays Hulot for the last time, was originally conceived as a modest telefilm, although it ended up being released in theaters. It also has a small budget Zafarrancho in the circus , which premiered on Swedish television in 1973.
For many years, Tati was trying to bring Confusion , his latest script, to the movies. But she suffered from serious health problems and furthermore she was unable to obtain financing. He died of a pulmonary embolism on November 4, 1982 in the French capital. “Goodbye, Monsieur Hulot. We cried for him when he died. We should have helped him when he was alive!”, explained an article in Paris Match. The 2010 animated film The Illusionist by Jacques Tati is based on an original script by the comedian, written in 1956.