Jacques Tati, tombé de la lune

It's just half past the hour.

- Shall I turn it on? - By all means.

Tonight as each night at the same time

we bring you Prof. Platoff!

Today's subject: "Work it out yourself"

Jacques Tati Fallen From The Moon

The year is 1958.

Jacques Tati is in New York as Mr. Hulot, the character he created a few years earlier.

With his nose in the air and trousers too short, he hauls his figure through the city's streets.

Tati isn't there for a vacation.

He's accompanying the release of his new film,

Mon Oncle, which is about to be a hit in the United States, Like everywhere it's shown.

It will soon be in the running for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Already, Tati is thinking about his next project.

He is about to embark on the biggest and most ambitious film of his life.

The one into which he'll pour his genius, his energy, his health, his house.

The one that will burn his wings and ruin him.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Before stumbling, one must first climb the mountain.

Before the fall, we must tell the ascent, step by step.

The story begins in the mid-1930s, in a music hall club.

Jacques Tati performs his show Sporting Impressions,

in which he mimes the gestures of a tennis player, a goalkeeper, or a boxer.

A good comedian, Tati would say, is above all a good pair of legs.

From his earliest shorts, first as an actor, then

as a writer-director, he followed this principle.

He makes his body and movements the raw material of his cinema.

Jacques Tati was 40 when he made his first feature, Jour de fête, just after the war.

He reprised the character of François,

which he had already played in The School for Postmen, and his unique way of using his body.

From one scene to the next, he makes his character spin, waltz, as if by accident.

A bit like in the films of the silent-era legends of American cinema,

Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, whom Tati greatly admired.

Tati made his first comedy with string and glue.

He had a very small team of technicians, some of whom also acted in the film.

He recruited extras in Sainte-Sévère, where he had spent part of the war.

He had promised the locals he would come back to make a film.

And so, we plunged into this adventure with full commitment.

It was like waking up one morning and deciding to make a film.

People said "You're crazy, you want to shoot a short film?" "No, it's a feature film!"

Tati didn't hesitate to take risks.

He shot his film using a new process, Thompson Colour, which was supposed to make Jour de fête

one of the first French feature films in colour.

Insoluble technical problems eventually forced him to give it up.

Tati accepted a black-and-white release, but no distributor wanted to show it in cinemas.

For a year, the film-maker searched in vain for a distributor.

Fortunately, Tati had the perseverance of a long-distance runner.

Jour de fête eventually made its way into cinemas.

Released in 1949, the film was a great success with audiences.

Tati's career was launched.

But the film-maker did not forget the people of Saint-Séver.

In June, he returned to the village to share his success with them.

You, who live all year in nervousness, agitation, turmoil.

You're thinking about it.

You, who spend most of your life in offices,

factories, workshops. You're thinking about it.

You, who are already beginning to have obligations and worries.

You, who are burdened with responsibilities.

You, miss.

You, sir.

Well, rejoice, because soon, you're all going on vacation.

Here comes summer.

Here comes the beach. Here is a film where you'll find all the atmosphere of vacation.

It's the great comic revelation of Jour de fête, Jacques Tati.

Tati has an independent spirit.

He likes to experiment with each new project.

For his second comedy, set in a small seaside resort on the Atlantic coast,

he invents a new character, once again played by himself.

This character, who will go down in cinema history, is Monsieur Hulot.

A dreamy, nearly mute man, defined by Tati’s iconic look and accessories.

Monsieur... Monsieur?

What?

Allow me.

Hulot.

Tati, the mime, gives Hulot a tall, lanky silhouette,

a way of standing up very straight on his legs, while remaining supple in his joints.

But most of all, Tati gives Hulot a way of walking that is uniquely his own.

Monsieur Hulot is a lunar character, Tati would say.

In fact, his walk proves it, since he barely puts his heels on the ground.

He walks only on the balls of his feet, as if trying to get closer to the Moon.

As a child, Jacques Tati-Chef could spend hours lost in his own world.

He loved doing impressions and was not a very good student in school.

I had the good fortune of being sent to the corner quite often.

And from the corner, since you're a language professional,

you notice that the teacher you saw from the front and who seemed perfect,

from the corner you see that he's lowered his socks a bit,

he's scratching his calves, that is, you get to see behind the scenes.

That's how observation begins.

It's how I started to realise there was more than just impeccable and proper people.

From a good Franco-Russo-Dutch-Italian bourgeois family,

he left high school before his baccalaureate and failed the entrance exam for arts and trades.

He preferred to party.

He married late in life, to Micheline Winter, whom he falsely loved.

But his iron-fisted mother-in-law barred his Music Hall friends from the wedding.

Tati never adapted to bourgeois codes.

Tati would often claim that Monsieur Hulot is a bit of an everyman.

But he remains himself: a nonconformist who creates chaos and does things his own way.

Tati plays with sound and dialogue like no one before him.

In his directing, the film-maker adopts a method he will never abandon.

Before filming, he mimes every gesture for the actors to reproduce.

Tati is an obsessive filmmaker who meticulously prepares every scene

and sometimes shoots more than 20 takes to get exactly what he wants.

He also has to deal with the wind and the whims of the weather.

Grains of sand get into the camera and cause irreversible scratches on the film.

Tati has to reshoot some sequences even though the summer of 1951 is already over.

Making a comedy is not exactly a vacation.

And creating the impression of lightness is the hardest thing of all.

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.

In the middle of winter 1953, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot is released

and is a triumph with the public.

The film is selected for Cannes, where it wins the International Critics Prize.

But Tati, likely not yet famous enough, is not filmed by the news cameras.

A few months later, the cameras are definitely there when he is awarded the Louis Delluc Prize,

A kind of cinema competition rewarding the best French film of the year.

The filmmaker plays the society game and quietly continues his rise.

Abroad, Jacques Tati begins to make a name for himself,

notably in England, where Mister Hulot is showing at London's chicest cinema,

and where the film sparks a true British passion.

The filmmaker comes to witness his success in person and, keen to adapt to local customs,

he equips himself with an umbrella that he will soon entrust to Monsieur Hulot.

In June 1954, Tati arrives in New York for his film’s Atlantic premiere.

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot becomes the most successful French film in U.S. history.

Surpassing The Baker's Wife by Marcel Pagnol, which had held the title for 15 years.

Tati takes advantage of his stay in New York to re-enact his sports impressions

in front of photographer Philippe Halsman's lens.

But above all, he spends his days observing American gigantism

and the conquering modernity in the land of progress.

He observes the human species in its American variant.

By watching passers-by, he draws ideas for a character or picks up a gesture.

Tati is a film-maker in constant reconnaissance.

I flirt a little, I take my time. Yes, I find it pleasant.

And I walk and observe on the street, then I see if my subject holds up, if really,

yes, it's good like that, that's it.

Then little by little, while observing, I build and tell my story.

Back in France, Tati could rest on his laurels.

Why not allow himself a detour into the world of advertising, as his impresario suggests?

Tati's response is cutting.

I'd like to point out that I particularly love my work

and under no circumstances do I do it to promote some brand of auto-mobile,

let alone the quality of spaghetti.

Tati thinks only of his art and his next film.

This time, there's no question of changing character.

But Tati wants to continue renewing himself and experimenting.

His new comedy, entitled Mon Oncle, Will be shot in colour, and for the first time,

He decides to film partly in a studio.

He asks one of his artistic collaborators, the painter-architect Jacques Lagrange,

to design plans for an ultra-modern villa, a robot-like house with eyeball-shaped windows.

More than just a set, it will be a true character at the centre of the film,

revealing bourgeois snobbery and convention.

"Everything is connected," says Tati's heroine, Madame Arpel.

But in this sterile villa, no one is connected to anyone.

In his third film, Tati innovates again with the soundtrack.

He uses it to make a visionary critique, Not of technology itself, but of how it is used.

As usual, Tati takes the time to mime every gesture to each of his actors.

He even does it for Dacky, the Arpels’ dog, the only disruptor in a perfectly ordered world.

Oh Dacky!

Come here!

- I'm sure it's its fault. - Dacky!

We've got to get it to walk in front of the sensor again.

Dacky, will you come here?

- Come on! - Ah, he's coming.

Come on, Dacky, come.

- Dacky! - It's not working any more.

What are we going to do?

Oh, listen...

Go, Dacky. Go on, go.

Of course he'll go if you scold him.

We need to get out of here, right? We'll have to call Georgette.

In Mon Oncle, the surprising Mr. Hulot has traded his vacation attire for city clothes.

And his rickety car from the previous film must have given up the ghost.

He is the uncle who gives the film its title, but above all, its free and offbeat spirit.

For Mr. Hulot struggles greatly to conform to the harsh laws of social life.

And he cares little for the illusions of success pursued by his sister and brother-in-law.

Oh, you're not coming in?

If you hadn't gone into cinema, what would you have liked to do?

I worked in a shop, my grandfather was a framer.

- A framer? - Yes, a framer.

The framer of Toulouse-Lautrec, a friend of Van Gogh. My father took over the shop.

Normally, I should be working in that shop, framing paintings by Buffet.

- Would you like that? - I'd rather be framed.

- I'm in too much of a rush to be a framer. - Yes, of course.

Jacques Tati is a workaholic.

After six exhausting months of filming, he devotes fifteen months to finishing his film,

working ten hours a day.

Finally, in the spring of 1958, the perfectionist is ready to face the public eye.

Five years after Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Jacques Tati’s new film competes at Cannes.

The filmmaker insisted on coming with his entire technical team and cast.

On the evening of the awards ceremony, Mon Oncle receives the prestigious Special Jury Prize,

for the originality and comedic strength of the work.

Mon Oncle is a huge success in France and Europe, where Tati tours with the film.

In Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden, he is welcomed like a star.

In Rome, Tati takes the opportunity to visit Federico Fellini.

The Italian director offered him the role of Don Quixote in a planned adaptation.

But sadly, the film would never be made.

In September 1958, Tati leaves for a two-month tour of America,

travelling city to city to present Mon Oncle in a version adapted for American audiences.

His tour ends in Los Angeles, where Mon Oncle competes for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

And the winner is... My Uncle.

I would like to say a few words with my very bad English.

I find that people who speak the worst English want to talk more than the others.