Trafic

Mr. Hulot’s retirement film Trafic fondley recalls the heyday of the comic character with his usual antics. As in all his previous films Jacques Tati shows a world filled with the most unusal perceptions of society and his bumbling comic character amazingly rising above it all. In Trafic Mr. Hulot (Jacques Tati) is the designer for Altra, a Paris car company that has one new model van for camping. The annual auto show is being held and the company is desperately trying to finish the van and all the display items to pack up and take to the auto show in Amsterdam but the entire work force is a collection of haphazard workers doing their jobs without any real sense of expertise. The van has been completed but doesn’t actually run yet so Hulot and his Mechanic (Tony Knepper) have to push the van up a ramp into a truck to transport it to Amsterdam. The Public Relations Representative (Maria Kimberly) tries to navigate the entire process consistently attempting to motivate everyone with her American spirit. Along the way from Paris through Belgium to Amsterdam they break down, run out of gas, get arrested by the Police, and cause a multi-car auto accident, but manage to get to the auto show. Hulot meanders through it all with his usual pluck just beyond the reach of the fickle finger of fate. The film is a commentary on the obsession of post-modern culture with the automobile, and although Hulot doesn’t cause so many of the unusual mishaps that occur in the film, the naturalistic pacing of the film with specific silliness woven in reaffirms the sense of detached automatic response people have to others in a mechanized society. Accompanying this is a clever little musical leitmotif that italicizes the kinetic craziness that Hulot finds himself in. Jacques Tati is essentially a humanist and his films reflect the issue of how Man thrives in a culture where technology dominates. In Trafic the van that Hulot has created for Alta is a model which has nearly every accoutrement attached- there is an electric razor built into the car horn, a steak cooker built into the front grill on the van, a shower built into the rear door, and the van itself actually elongates to accompany an inflating bed. It is a ridiculous invention that manages to contain everything for the owner, and considering the period, actually could have been a big seller. The irony is that the car company Altra has created a car that has everything needed for a person to live away from his home, thus contributing to the kinetic wandering of the post-modern civilization. Man is seen a rootless creature in Trafic because the constant need to move is not only necessary for work and career but ultimately a way of life. The mechanized compulsion with the automobile is the essence of the film echoing the fact that in a rootless society constant movement is the reassuring element in a man’s life. The Criterion Disc with Trafic also includes excellent documentary footage by Jacques Tati’s daughter Sophie Tatischeff chronicling the evolution of the filmmaker’s on-screen alter ego Mr. Hulot. Included is archival footage of Tati from his childhood, and his development and ultimate move to feature filmmaking. Many of his films are excerpted with interviews with many critics and other who have been impressed with his movies. Tati admits to admiring the former great comic of silent film. He talks reverently of Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Mack Sennet, Harold Lloyd and others. He also admits to consummate people watching and claims that the inspiration for his famous Mr. Hulot came from a barber he knew who “knew nothing about horses”. In many TV interviews Tati demonstrates the behavior he observes in public servants and especially in everyday public areas where the mechanical behavior and banal existence out weigh a person’s sense of worth, but for great comic re-creations in the artist’s hands as director and actor. Overall the film has an easy pacing that recaptures Mr. Hulot’s quirky person but with a resigned quality in the atmosphere the aging character lives in. Reportedly Trafic followed one of Tati’s most ambitious film project Play Time, a big budget film including many original sets and a cast of nearly hundreds of actors. Play Time was a grand failure in the vein of the great expected blockbusters of the past. Tati went bankrupt when the project failed to sell box office tickets, and Trafic was his follow-up, clear low-budget film. It’s too bad that Tati with his clear concern for the average man is so ‘European’ in his sensibility- this is probably responsible for his past miss-steps with Play Time- he was shooting for the broad-based American market that just didn’t get the movie. Tati is a philosopher and his perceptions of the working class are pointed and touching. This definitely a movie to watch with Mallomars! Enjoy.

Despite Hulot's inefficiency at getting the show on the road, Trafic is an essential work from one of the movies' great comedy stylists.....But Trafic doesn't seem to suffer from pandering or artistic compromise;.... ... Full Review

But it's a shining example of the auteur theory corollary, which is that a bad film by a great director is always going to be better than a mediocre director's best work. ... Full Review

For a 2-disc release, there are surprisingly few features in the set, but the feature-length documentary on Disc 2 justifies the multi-disc treatment.....s greatest directors, Jacques Tati.....he was only the lone director of six features as well as a few shorts, as well as some very exciting archival footage of Tati.....On-screen characters sound as if they are speaking from off-screen, almost....In the seven minute interview, the cast speak glowingly about Tati..... ... Full Review

Jacques Tati's jokes float on the funny bone like champagne fizzles the tongue - no megaton punchline, just a slowly dawning realization that the world is a funny place. ... Full Article