Nixta Rolls

Jacques Tati may be one of the most underwatched film-makers I know of, though thankfully that hasn’t stopped (as it never does) the Criterion Collection restoring and releasing his flicks.

His visual comedy harks back to the days of enforced silent cinema and he keeps the tradition alive (incorporating no doubt the French excellence in mime), stepping only gingerly (but I think deliberately so) into the world of sound. It’s probably why his films have aged so well. But more than that, it’s not merely the small human visual gags that permeate his films - he has a knack for the bigger picture (see Playtime - it couldn’t have been a bigger vision). More subtle details. In fact, he uses sound brilliantly, it’s just seldom in the form of dialogue.

Look in the video above as the drivers start to potter around in bemusement and shock after the main event (probably around 1 minute in). He reduces them all to strutting birds of paradise. I’m still trying to figure out exactly why beyond the pure cleverness of the idea - I’m sure there’s a reason there - it’s tugging at the back of my mind.

I didn’t realise he’d made Trafic until just recently (shame on me). I had always thought he’d bankrupted himself making Playtime. Both are beautiful films to watch. At the time, I don’t know how I would have taken them. He made them as commentaries on the footloose headless progress of technology; almost as a warning (there’s an irony there that he refused to show Playtime in theatres that weren’t equipped with modern 70mm projectors - the equivalent perhaps of just releasing a mainstream film for IMAX - despite the need to recoup costs). But today they’re like a bookmark for me. If the future had evolved from Tati’s representations of the modern to be as clean as he foretold it, I’d prefer it to today’s reality. It’s a more gentle complement to Spike Milligan’s wariness.