Jacque Tati: 3 Short Subjects

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Jacque Tati: 3 Short Subjects
Topic Started: Aug 22 2009, 03:27 PM (25 Views)
Laughing Gravy	Aug 22 2009, 03:27 PM Post #1
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,070 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	Today's film Tati-Fest (featuring Playtime, reviewed elsewhere in this section of the Balcony) included three shorts from the beginning and end of his career. Soigne ton Gauche ("Watch Your Left"), directed by René Clément in 1936, gives us Tati as a novice sparring partner for a boxer; he interrupts the fisticuffs to read a boxing manual, and at one part accidentally reads a fencing book and strikes a very funny boxing stance. A good showcase for Tati's physical comedy and some Hal Roach-inspired gags. L'école des Facteurs ("School for Postmen"), written and directed by Tati in 1947 after a lengthy film sabbatical necessitated by the war, is a bright, funny comedy with Tati as a new postman who, after a rigorous training session is sent flying off on a bicycle to deliver the mail. Much of M. Hulot's cluelessness is on display here, and the film's highlight is Tati's goofy jitterbug in a cantina. (Two years later, this short would be expanded to feature length in Tati's feature starring debut, Jour de Fête.) Each of these shorts are about 15 minutes long and are pretty good examples of screen slapstick of the day. Tati of course hit the big-time with M. Hulot's Holiday (1953), followed by three sequels, the Oscar-winning Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967), and finally Trafic (1971). (Another Hulot film, Confusion, was scripted but not filmed when Tati died in 1982 at the age of 75.) While filming Playtime, or perhaps shortly after (some of the props of the feature show up here as a gag), Tati made Cours du Soir ("Night Classes"), which is of interest but not funny. M. Hulot spends 30 minutes teaching pantomime to a class of middle-aged men in suits. Tati didn't direct this very low-budget and amateurish film; one wonders what the intended purpose of it was, other than to capture one of the screen's great pantomime artists practicing his craft demonstrating tripping, fishing, horseback riding, and - in a great B&W sequence that gives a nod to how Tati had begun his career - a reprisal of the training sequence from L'école des Facteurs.


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