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Jacques Tati: Everyman Magnified

November 5th, 2007 by Steve Bowbrick

Jacques Tati as M. Hulot in Mon Oncle

We love Jacques Tati in our house. Well, I suppose it's mostly me that likes him. My kids put up with him but only because they think he's a sort of bleached Mr Bean. Mr Bean's creator Rowan Atkinson makes an appearance in Rory Bremner's half hour about the French genius - Atkinson reckons Bean isn't as nice a person as Tati's creation Hulot.

I like the part about Tati's pioneering and inventive use of sound: the distinctive (and inexplicably hilarious) sound of that hotel swing door in M. Hulot's holiday and the quite brilliant 'silent door' in Playtime, for instance (MP3, Real)

The pic is a still from Mon Oncle, which I think is the best of Tati's films.

Listen: [MP3] [Real]

This entry was posted by by Steve Bowbrick on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 7:10 pm . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Jacques Tati: Everyman Magnified”

  1. Tuppenceworth.ie blog » Trivial Pursuits Says:
    November 26th, 2007 at 12:13 am

    [...] pondered this question again recently, having listened to a documentary on the great French film-maker Jacques Tati. In the introduction, I heard him lauded as a man who [...]

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