UCSD-TV Movies - University of California Television

World Cinema Saturdays

Jacques Tati

Jacques Tati

Director Jacques Tati is inseparable from his iconic creation, Monsieur Hulot, who wanders silently through his four most famous features, attired in a rumpled trench coat and slouch hat while observing or (more often) inadvertently instigating comic catastrophes. Like Chaplin's Little Tramp, Hulot is baffled by technology and has bad luck with jobs. Infected with an endearing clumsiness that marks his encounters with mechanical devices and people alike, Hulot endures these humiliations with a Buster Keaton-like stone face. The comic effect is enhanced by Tati’s extraordinary visual and sound design; sight gags proliferate with such rapidity, and in so many areas of the screen, that it is impossible to catch them all in one viewing, and the soundtracks abandon the illusion of naturalism in favor of abstract collages of noises, voices and music that raise Tati’s gags to levels of transcendental absurdity.

This Saturday's Movies - 3/13/2010

4:00 PM		Jour De Fete After watching a film on how efficient the American post office is, postal worker Francois attempts to single-handedly improve his rural French post service, to bring it up to American efficiency standards. (France, 1948, 79 min, dir. Jacques Tati, with Jacques Tati & Maine Vallee, French with English subtitles)
5:30 PM		Mr. Hulot's Holiday Monsieur Hulot comes to a beachside hotel for a vacation, where he accidentally (but good-naturedly) causes havoc. (1953/86m/d. Tati /Jacques Tati & Nathalie Pascaud/ French with English subtitles)
7:00 PM		Mon Oncle Monsieur Hulot visits the technology-driven world of his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, but he can't quite fit into the surroundings. (French, 1958, Color, 115 mins, dir. Jacques Tati, with Jacques Tati & Jean Pierre Zola, French with English subtitles).
9:00 PM		Playtime Monsieur Hulot has to contact an American official in Paris, but he gets lost in the maze of modern architecture which is filled with the latest technical gadgets. (USA, 1973, Color, 124 mins, dir. Jacques Tati, with Jacques Tati & Rita Maiden)
11:00 PM		Blood of a Poet A factory chimney starts to collapse. A young poet in a room sketching a series of faces is shocked when the mouth of one of the faces comes alive. (1930, 52 mins, dir. Jean Cocteau, with Jean Cocteau & Pauline Carton, French with English subtitles)

Upcoming Movies

3/20/2010		Persona (#3824; 82 minutes; 6/20/1998)
3/20/2010		The Magician (#1776; 100 minutes; 10/12/1996)
3/20/2010		The Silence (#12040; 95 minutes; 11/11/2006)
3/20/2010		The Virgin Spring (#1764; 88 minutes; 10/12/1996)
3/20/2010		Through a Glass Darkly (#12039; 89 minutes; 11/11/2006)
3/27/2010		Floating Weeds (#3466; 116 minutes; 11/22/1997)
3/27/2010		Good Morning (#12080; 93 minutes; 1/6/2007)
3/27/2010		Late Spring (#12090; 107 minutes; 1/6/2007)
3/27/2010		Tokyo Story (#3465; 129 minutes; 11/22/1997)
4/3/2010		Angels With Dirty Faces (#15532; 97 minutes; 12/6/2008)
4/3/2010		Little Caesar (#15533; 78 minutes; 12/6/2008)
4/3/2010		The Petrified Forest (#15534; 82 minutes; 12/6/2008)
4/3/2010		The Public Enemy (#15535; 83 minutes; 12/6/2008)
4/3/2010		White Heat (#15537; 113 minutes; 12/6/2008)