A Tender Soul in a Rigid World

The Stella Artois French Film Festival returns to the Gateway City for its second year on September 17–19, 2010, courtesy of Cinema St. Louis. The lineup includes contemporary films by Gallic luminaries such as Olivier Assayas, Catherine Breillat, and Jacques Rivette.  The treat of the Festival, however, will no doubt be new theatrical prints of two features and one short film from actor-director Jacques Tati, that influential slapstick artisan and uneasy critic of post-war culture.

Tati directed just six feature films in 25 years. In four of those, he appears in the persona of Monsieur Hulot, a sweet, bumbling dimwit who is perpetually at sea in a modern world of middle-class distractions. Few directors with so slim a filmography have been able to so decisively establish an instantly recognizable style; only Terrence Malick is comparable in this respect, and he and Tati are worlds apart in their sensibilities.  Blending beguiling visuals, good-natured wit, and gentle but spot-on jabs at the absurdity of contemporary life, Tati’s works seem to comprise a wholly unique species of film. Their frequently broad humor and minimal dialog demonstrates a profound debt to the silent masterworks of Keaton and Chaplin. Yet Tati exhibits a meticulous attention to the aural landscape of voice, music, and the general din of daily life.

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) was Tati’s first feature to focus on the misadventures of his titular buffoon, a lanky fellow who always has his signature umbrella and tobacco pipe at hand. The film follows Hulot on his stay at a seaside resort during the traditional August holiday, where his clumsiness and guileless charm collide with the increasingly no-nonsense business of Gallic recreation.  Not so much a story as a series of amusing set-pieces with both slapstick and satirical elements, the film pokes fun at a plethora of characters representing the best and worst of bourgeois society. Yet the film is never mean-spirited, and always remains first and foremost concerned with silly, adeptly-choreographed sight gags. The languid pace of the tale—which matches the sleepy, sun-kissed setting—permits ample opportunities to savor the picture-postcard perfection of Tati’s shots, whose dazzling black-white beauty evokes the aromas of sea air and sweet taffy.

Following his appearance in the 1958 Oscar-winning My Uncle, Mr. Hulot found his way into Play Time (1965), a relatively experimental, staggeringly ambitious flop that has come to be regarded as the apex of the director’s oeuvre. Portraying approximately twenty-four hours of contemporary urban life, the film was shot in glorious 70mm on vast sets that replicate a Paris of brutally modernist airports, offices, apartments, and night clubs. Play Time possesses a story only in the loosest sense, although the film frequently returns to select characters, among them a comely American tourist, a beleaguered middle manager, a sad-sack waiter, and a boisterous, drunken businessman. Hulot himself only wanders into the action periodically, and serves chiefly as a signifier of Tati’s own wariness about the hectic, sterile world that was emerging in the mid-twentieth century.

The apprehension and melancholy that are detectable but constrained in the director’s earlier films are provided more substantial breathing room in Play Time. In its most pointed moments, the film slathers on skeptical bemusement at the strange new character of post-war civilization: pre-fabricated, shrink-wrapped, aesthetically inhumane, and culturally vacant. However, the current of disillusionment that runs through the film is balanced with a rich admiration for humanity’s essential resiliency and its ability to find contentment. Play Time’s characters might be lost in a whirl of conspicuous consumption, self-conscious artificiality, and pre-packaged style, but their existence is not one of misery. Their wonder at the cold beauty and convenience of their hyper-contemporary world is genuine. Moreover, when they run headlong into the limits of modernity, they respond by adapting, as when diners at a hip nightspot turn a collapsing ceiling into a impromptu VIP room.

Ultimately, however, Play Time is as impressive for its sensory splendors as for its uncertain probing of modern life. The film remains legendary for its breathtaking widescreen compositions, its exclusive reliance on medium and long shots, and the dizzying whirl of people and objects that characterizes every scene. The title of conductor seems more apt than director, for Tati oversees a veritable symphony of color, motion, and sound with virtuoso precision. The opportunity to soak in the richness of the director’s magnum opus in its full theatrical glory should not be missed.

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday screens at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 17. Play Time screens with the Tati short, Evening Classes, at 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 18. Tickets for each film are $10. All films presented by the French Film Festival will be screened at Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, located at Forsyth Boulevard and Chaplin Drive. For more information, visit http://www.cinemastlouis.org/frenchfest.html.

St. Louis native Andrew Wyatt is the founder of the film aficionado website Gateway Cinephiles, where he has been an editor and contributor since 2007, authoring reviews, essays, and coverage of the St. Louis International Film Festival and Webster University Film Series.