Close Up

14 February 2016: Cours du Soir + Trafic

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Cours du Soir

Nicolas Ribowski
1967 | 30 min | Colour | DCP

In this Tati's evening class teacher is an amalgam of Hulot and Fançois, and in his demonstrations he allows both of these characters full rein, to great comic effect.

Trafic
Jacques Tati
1971 | 97 min | Colour | DCP  

In Jacques Tati’s Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, kitted out as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’s highways and byways. In this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new product (a "camping car" outfitted with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road there is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’s expert timing and side-splitting knack for visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.  

Part of our Jacques Tati retrospective