The Illusionist
The Illusionist is a love letter from a father to his daughter. For Sophie Tatischeff, the daughter of Jacques Tati, comedy genius and French cinema legend, this touching correspondence could not be left undelivered.
Catalogued in the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie) archives under the impersonal moniker ‘Film Tati Nº 4’, this un-produced script has waited half a century for hands to flick through its pages and realize its potential.
Those eager hands belonged to Sylvain Chomet, the Oscar nominated and critically acclaimed creator of The Triplets of Belleville/Belleville Rendezvous, who enthusiastically rose to the challenge to fulfil an impossible dream - to once again bring the magic of the incomparable Jacques Tati to life.
Jacques Tati (1907 - 82) is considered one of the greatest movie directors of all time. Shortening his name from Tatischeff for simplicity, the future Oscar-winning icon of French cinema made his first feature length movie at the age of 42.
Tati had spent his privileged early life (his ancestry traced back to Russian aristocracy) playing truant, indulging his passion for rugby and making his school friends laugh with improvised sports skits during post-match drinks.
Between 1930 and 1945 he transformed this talent for observation and fascination with the work of cinema slapstick artists such as W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton into a comedy stage act he toured around the music hall circuits of America and Europe.
The experience gave him all the material he would need for the six movie masterpieces he made over the next three decades.
Each captured an endearing combination of idealism, imagination and generosity, the reason Tati liked to call himself 'The Don Quixote of cinema'.
The first was Jour de fête/Holiday (1949), a rural ballad starring Tati as a local postman too easily distracted from his bicycle rounds.
Following this international box-office hit Tati then introduced the world to the character with which he is most fondly associated, Monsieur Hulot.
This charming, self-effacing, amiably oblivious and elegantly maladroit comic creation, wearing his signature trench coat and stripy socks peeping out from his too-short trousers, tripped though assorted mishaps lampooning modern society in Les vacances du Monsieur Hulot/Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon oncle/My Uncle (1958), Play Time (1967) and Trafic/Traffic (1971).
His last film, Parade (1974), produced for Swedish television, saw Tati return to his vaudeville roots with a circus performance, showcasing clown, juggling, acrobatic and mime acts.
From early burlesque to highly stylized modernism, Jacques Tati’s body of work continued the tradition of the silent comedy long after most audiences had forgotten it.
Subtle, whimsical, gentle and very funny, with punch lines often coming after slow, deceptive build-ups, Tati’s greatest achievement was creating his own self-contained movie universe with a delightful disregard for what anybody else was doing.
The Illusionist is released 20th August.