Through Jacques Tati’s Lens, a Quirky Universe Unfolds

There is a scene in “Mon Oncle,” a 1958 comedy directed by French filmmaker Jacques Tati, where Monsieur Hulot, a Buster Keaton-like character played by Tati himself, visits his nephew at the futuristic home of his unbearably bourgeois brother-in-law.

The family lives surrounded by all the numbing comforts that money can buy, including a grotesque fountain with a gurgling fish spitting out water. And yet, to the irritation of the brother-in-law, the face of the nephew lights up only when Hulot offers him a whistle and a silly clown made out of paper.

Happiness, Tati implies, is to be found in the simple things of life; the alleged advantages of technology will inevitably complicate your existence, leaving you bitter and empty.

Monsieur Hulot’s attitude--his dogged contempt for the trappings of modern life--has a special resonance today, perhaps even more so than it did in 1958.

In fact, the films of Tati, a former music-hall performer and pantomimist who died in 1982 at age 74, look and feel downright visionary at the beginning of the new millennium.

Not surprisingly, there is still a lot of interest in the six feature-length movies that the filmmaker painstakingly crafted from 1947 to 1974.

Superlative DVD editions of three of these films (“M. Hulot’s Holiday,” “Mon Oncle” and “Playtime”) have just been released by the Criterion Collection, all featuring video introductions by Monty Python member Terry Jones.

And on Friday, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art begins “The Genius of Jacques Tati,” a two-week retrospective of the filmmaker’s work, including screenings of three rare shorts (all of which, coincidentally, are included in the Criterion DVDs), a new 35-millimeter print of “Playtime” and a restored color print of Tati’s first film, “Jour de Fete,” which was shown in black and white when the movie’s original color process (Thomsoncolor) became extinct before any prints of the film could be projected.

“In a way,” says Ian Birnie, director of LACMA’s film department, “Tati manages the unique feat of looking backward and forward at the same time--backward in his evocation of mime and the body language of the great silent comedians; yet ahead in imagining a world dominated by baffling gadgets and labor-saving devices that end up turning us all into a universal population of bumbling Hulots. Even a film as specific to its location as ‘M. Hulot’s Holiday’ is remarkably prescient in predicting a world of international tourism in which everything is reduced to a series of easily digestible ‘holiday moments.”’

Tati’s second picture, the exquisite “M. Hulot’s Holiday,” with its haunting black-and-white landscapes and carefully choreographed vignettes of comic perfection, might be the perfect introduction to the filmmaker’s quirky universe.

Made in 1953, the film introduces Tati’s alter ego--the clumsy, ever-gentlemanly and instantly lovable Hulot. A gawky, middle-age man with a permanently wooden face and a funny, bouncy sort of walk, Hulot represents the charming politesse and prudish mores of a bygone era.

The movie doesn’t offer much in terms of conventional narrative. Instead, it follows Hulot as he arrives at a quaint seaside community for a brief vacation. His irrepressible clumsiness affects everyone around him, generating a variety of embarrassing events--from subtle, almost imperceptible disturbances to mammoth-size disasters.

By the end of the picture, when Hulot, ignored by the majority of the other travelers, drives away in his beat-up car, we get the feeling that he has enjoyed the vacation more than anyone else.

“He is the wisest of the bunch, but he doesn’t know it,” says Lee Ferdinand, researcher with Home Vision, the company distributing the Criterion Collection. “He simply exists, going on about his life in the mundane world around him. Because of this attitude, animals and children are attracted to him the most. By the end of the holiday, everybody has taken a keen interest in Hulot. He is an unconventional character in a conventional setting.”

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Watching “M. Hulot’s Holiday” can be strenuous the first time. To successfully follow the film and laugh at Tati’s jokes, you learn to take pleasure in the minute idiosyncrasies that make us human--those quirky things we do in the name of fun and social interaction.

Soon enough, things look surprisingly droll when viewed under his perceptive magnifying glass. As a director, Tati is fascinated by the most trivial details of everyday life, and the underlying madness that lurks whenever people get together.

Whereas “M. Hulot’s Holiday” was a gentle meditation on the nature of life, Tati’s subsequent films offer a more biting satire on the evils of technology and its consequences.

“On ‘Mon Oncle,’ he still offers you a view of how things used to be,” Ferdinand says. “Everything is irregular and colorful in the quarter of Paris where Hulot lives. People are more like people.”

The mocking spirit of “Mon Oncle” turns into ferocious condemnation in 1967’s “Playtime,” a delirious tour through a space-age Paris populated by noisy American tourists. A weird and frightening picture, it is considered by many as Tati’s masterpiece.

“By the time we get to ‘Playtime,’ there is nothing left reminiscent of the old times,” Ferdinand says. “Sure enough, there is still beauty to be found. But you have to look much harder for it now.”

Until “Playtime,” Tati had been a commercially successful filmmaker hindered only by his Stanley Kubrick-like perfectionism. This time around, his decision to shoot the project in the expensive 70-millimeter format, the construction of expensive sets and the film’s failure at the box office left the director bankrupt and bitterly disappointed.

He never quite recovered from the fiasco, yet he managed to complete two more films before his death: Hulot’s last appearance in 1971’s “Traffic,” and a pleasant circus extravaganza titled “Parade,” which he shot on video for Swedish television in 1974.

Criterion is planning to release DVD editions of both films, together with “Jour de Fete,” in the near future.

Like comedians Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton before him, Tati was able to generate belly laughs while leaving a melancholy smile on your face.

“Tati really was a genius,” LACMA’s Birnie says. “He was way ahead of Monty Python or the Farrelly brothers in his use of noises and silly [sound effects]. And his films have a visual order and precision that is not only beautiful as imagery but that also sharpens the sense of impending chaos that develops out of everyday situations as banal as a flat tire or a broken doorknob.”

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* “The Genius of Jacques Tati,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. (323) 857-6010. Friday: “Jour de Fete.” Saturday: “M. Hulot’s Holiday,” “Traffic.” July 27: “Mon Oncle,” “Parade.” July 28: “Playtime.” 7:30 p.m. Admission: $7, general, $5 for museum and AFI members, seniors and students with valid ID.