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Jacques Tati (October 9 1908 - November 5 1982) was a French film-maker. He was born Jacques Tatischeff in Le Pecq, Yvelines, France, and died in Paris, France.
Originally a mime, in the late 1930s Tati recorded some of his early sporting cameos on film with some success and thus began his career as a film-maker. His films have little dialogue or plot but are built around elaborate visual gags. In all his films, Tati plays the lead who with the exception of his first film is always the gauche and socially inept Monsieur Hulot. An important theme in Tati's work, most notably in Mon Oncle and Playtime, is the impracticality and ugliness of modern technology and design.
His first major feature, Jour de Fête, concerns a village postman who is influenced by a film shown at the village fair to go to extreme lengths to improve his mail deliveries.
His second film, Les Vacances de Mr Hulot, introduces Hulot and follows his adventures at a French beach resort. This was followed by Mon Oncle, which revolves around Hulot's hapless efforts to obtain a job. Mon Oncle won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1958.
Playtime took Tati nine years to complete. His most daring and most expensive work - he had a modern city, dubbed Tativille, built on the outskirts of Paris - it failed commercially, and he consequently produced his final two pictures with far more modest budgets. His final script Confusion, about television, was never produced.
In an interview, Rowan Atkinson noted that Tati's characters were a source of inspiration for the creation of the British Mr Bean.
Select filmography
External links
The Jacques Tati official website (http://www.tativille.com/)
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