David Bellos - Jacques Tati

CONTENTS

The best of the years biographies David Bellos examines with perception and style how the creator of Monsieur Hulot staked a legitimate claim in a rapidly changing medium to the mantle once worn by Chaplin and Keaton

JOHN COLDSTREAM , Daily Telegraph

There is almost a convention that the lives of great comic geniuses reveal them as gloomy, glum individuals who had to contend with an inner darkness, so it is no surprise if David Belloss excellent biography turns out to be a sad book about one of the funniest men in cinma history

JOSEPH FARRELL , Glasgow Herald

Full of insight as well as information Bellos proves a lucid commentator on the meaning of this strange body of work

JONATHAN COE , London Review of Books

A studied, thoughtful biography which explores Jacques Tatis films with methodical care and precision

IAN GRAHAM , Irish Independent

Most movie stars would beg for a biography like this: shy of dumb hero worship, stoutly defensive of genuine inspiration, it throws nothing more than polite glances at the personal life of its subject, preferring to unpick the stitching of his jokes, or to step back and stare at the society from which he emerged, and which he could never quite bring himself to flay

ANTHONY LANE , New Yorker

An affectionate and shrewd biography of this master comedian

DAVID JACOBSON , Wall Street Journal

Bellos displays Monsieur Hulots unique gift with precision. As one might expect from the meticulous student of Balzac and the biographer of the eccentric Georges Perec, the analysis unfolds firmly within a French and artistic tradition rather than a fanzine gush. This is welcome and appropriate. Tati made very few films. What he gave to the cinma owed as much to his participation in everyday life as it did to innovations in colour or scope. Bellos is a connoisseur of these pleasures and pretensions, an ideal observer of the po-faced man who moved imperturbably through the spectrum of the Gallic provinces, seaside resorts and dadaist modernity

NOEL PURDON , Australian

DAVID BELLOS is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton where he also chairs the Department of French and Italian. He won the Prix Goncourt de la Biographie for Georges Perec: A Life in Words. He also won the IBM-France prize for his translation of Perecs Life A Users Manual. He has translated W or The Memory of Childhood, Things: A Story of the Sixties and 53 Days, all major works by Georges Perec, as well as several works by the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare.

The full story of one of Frances greatest cinema legends, a clown whose film-making innovation was to turn everyday life into an art form.

Jacques Tatis Monsieur Hulot, unmistakable with his pipe, brolly and striped socks, was a creation of slapstick genius that made audiences around the world laugh at the sheer absurdity of life. This biography charts Tatis rise and fall, from his earliest beginnings as a music hall mime during the Depression, to the success of Jour de Fte and Mon Oncle, to Playtime, the grandiose masterpiece that left the once celebrated director bankrupt and begging for equipment to complete his final films.

Analysing Tatis singular vision, Bellos reveals the intricate staging of his most famous gags and draws upon hitherto inaccessible archives to produce a unique assessment of his work and its context for film lovers and film students alike.

GEORGES PEREC

A LIFE IN WORDS

BALZAC CRITICISM IN FRANCE , 18501900

THE MAKING OF A REPUTATION

.Count Dmitri Tatischeff in the uniform of the Alexandrisky Hussars

.Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff in French military uniform, circa 1915

.Jacques Tatischeff at his First Communion

.The family business, Rue de Caumartin, 1929

.Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff on horseback, circa 1925

.Jacques and Nathalie Tatischeff, Mers-les-bains, circa 1916

.Jacques Tatischeff in his teens

.M. Hulot defeated by a white horse, 1953

.The workshop at Rue de Caumartin, 1929

.Tati and comrades, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1928

.Tati and a white horse, Stockholm, 1975

.Military pageant, 10 June 1928. Tati in the uniform of a carabinier of 1809

.Tati giving a mime lesson on the set of Mon Oncle

.The garden-party in Mon Oncle (1958)

.R.C.F. 31: Gala Programme

.Sport 33: Gala Programme

.Father and Son, July 1931

.Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff playing tennis

.On demande une brute: after the match

.Gai dimanche: under the bonnet

.Gai dimanche: Tati and Rhum touting for customers

.Les Vacances de M. Hulot: the Amilcar

.Jacques Tati, studio portrait, 1936

.Tati-centaur, circa 1937

.Tati in performance at the Scala, Berlin, 1937 or 1938

.Soigne ton gauche: Tatis first cycling exploit

.Soigne ton gauche: play-acting in the farmyard

.Soigne ton gauche: boxing with foils

.Closing shot of Soigne ton gauche

.Tati in uniform, probably 1940, probably with his sister, Nathalie

.Tati at the A.B.C., 1943

.Micheline Winter as a young woman

.Tati and Micheline at their wedding, Eglise Saint-Augustin, March 1944

.Tati reflected on to the set of Sylvie et le fantme

.Jacques Tati, Aix-en-Provence, October 1945

.The Drugstore in Playtime. This shot is suffused with a greenish glow from the chemists neon sign

.Jour de fte: the buzzing bee (1)

.Jour de fte: the buzzing bee (2)

.Shooting Jour de fte with two cameras

.Jacques Tati and Henri Marquet at Sainte-Svre, 1947

.Lydie Nol, Marcel Franchi, Jacques Mercanton and Jacques Tati taking time out in Sainte-Svre, summer 1947

.LEcole des facteurs: GIs in the bar of the original Follainville

.Jour de fte: the Ugly Americans

.The Village Idiot

.Raising the maypole

.Franois takes the salute

.Franois returns to the land

.Tati directing Alexandre Wirtz during the retakes for Jour de fte, Sainte-Svre, September 1961

.Jacques Lagrange at Saint-Marc-sur-mer, 1952

.Borrah Minevich

.Lagranges preparatory sketches of beach furniture for Les Vacances de M. Hulot

.Hulot at the doorway of the Htel de la Plage

.Hulot and the peeping Tom

.Preparing to shoot the rumble-seat joke

.Some of Lagranges preparatory sketches for the villa

.Preparing to film on the beach at Saint-Marc