Album Description: In Jacques Tati's Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, outfitted as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris's highways and byways. For this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company's director of design, and accompanies his new vehicle (a camper tricked out in all sorts of absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius's expert timing and sidesplitting visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.
Amazon.com: Trafic, one of Jacques Tati’s later films starring his enigmatic alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, contains more direct social satire than his previous classics Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), and Playtime (1967), but lacks none of the vibrant physical humor that makes Hulot one of cinema’s most revered comedic characters. Filmed in a vivid color palette of red, yellow, and green cars against a silver and glass Modernist architectural backdrop, Trafic stars Mr. Hulot as the designer of an auto meant to travel in a truck to the Amsterdam Car Show to represent his company, Altra. Hulot’s camper wagon, aimed at simplicity with its efficient built-in kitchen and sleep gear, is constantly delayed due to car accidents, police run-ins, traffic jams, and other ironic mishaps. As Altra’s director (Honore Bastel) waits in their booth decorated with fake trees and bird recordings, Hulot, truckdriver Marcel (Marcel Fravel), and stylish public relations secretary Maria (Maria Kimberly), embark on an adventure in which their vehicles are clearly in charge. Dressed in his trademark tan raincoat and hat, Monsieur Hulot constantly transforms tragedy into comedy. In one famous scene, after hippies place an animal pelt under Maria’s car tire to pass as her dog, Pito, Hulot wears the pelt and dances to cheer his friend. Extended scenes showing trafficky highways and drivers fidgeting in their cars pitted against Hulot, constantly baffled by the technology he is supposed to master, reveal underlying themes of human disconnect with nature. Trafic stands as biting commentary against a culture sabotaged by the invention of the auto, and like Godard’s Weekend, stands as testament to a revolutionary age.
This Criterion Collection release includes important extras, like a 1973 episode of French show, "Morceaux de bravoure," in which Tati speaks about his overall working methods. Also impressive is his daughter’s full-length documentary, "In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot" (1989), which collects ample archival footage of Tati and his friend, professor A. Sauvy, discussing each film’s invention. Here, Tati said of Trafic that he was inspired to make a film that would make people smile after noticing so many frowns on the Paris highways. Road rage assuaged by cinema is a truly Modern gesture. --Trinie Dalton
Mr. Hulot returns This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film
Trafic is a film directed by Jacques Tati and continues the adventures of Mr. Hulot. This is the fourth and final film in the series. The other three were released in succession by the Criterion Collection several years ago and this final movie is long awaited by fans.
The film is about a concept car being taken from the factory in Paris to an auto show in Amsterdam. He is delayed in customs and goes through a series of other misadventures.
The film has various sight gags which are also very funny. I think this is the best film in the series and has some of the funniest material.
The special features are also impressive. Disc one contains the film with a theatrical trailer, a 1971 interview with cast members, and a 1973 episode about Tati, from a French television show.
Disc two contains a 1989 documentary of the four films in the series.
This is a great release and be sure to get the other three films.
The last we'll see of M. Hulot, and a melancholy farewell it is What can we make of Trafic, Jacques Tati's last film? It certainly isn't a major success, as M. Hulot's Holiday - Criterion Collection and Mon Oncle - Criterion Collection are. It's not a gallant failure, as I believe Playtime - Criterion Collection is. It seems to me that it is a sad, sometimes amusing combination of those things that made Tati so unique, so funny, so problematic and so drawn to making mundane social commentary. There must be something in the water we drink or the bread we eat that causes some humans with extraordinary artistic gifts to believe that because they are great artists they also must have equally great gifts of social philosophy, gifts which they are determined to share with us.
By the time Tati made Trafic, four years after Playtime, he had lost ownership of his life's work, his films, and most of his money. Playtime was a debacle. He spent a fortune, his own as well as others, to craft a perfectionist's dream of artistic control. He ended up with a movie that was filled with surprises, layer on layer of -- for wont of a better term -- sight and sound gags, with fascinatingly complex amusements for an audience willing to let the situations develop around them, and seemingly endless, obvious and often impersonal visual commentary on the homogenizing of modern society and the perils of technology. Most moviegoers were not all that interested.
Now, with Trafic, Mr. Hulot has come back. He is a designer for a Paris auto company, and he has developed a camping vehicle like no other. Trafic is the story of Mr. Hulot's delivery of his camper from Paris to an international auto show in Amsterdam. It's a long journey filled with misunderstandings, accidents and crashes, a PR executive with an endless number of dress changes, cops, windshield wipers and a lot of cars. The movie is as exquisitely built as an expensive vest pocket timepiece. Unfortunately, time has a way of catching us up, and Mr. Hulot now is a man past middle age, where male innocence seems unlikely and somewhat unattractive. Tati was 64 now, and he looks it. The gentle, innocent mime who meets unexpected personal situations at a small seaside hotel or tries to help his young nephew has been replaced by a well-meaning older gentleman we more often observe than we root for. His encounters with the clichés of faceless technology and bumbling bureaucracy are increasingly with people with few understandable, sympathetic foibles. Mr. Hulot to be at his best needs people we can come to like and interact with, not simply interchangeable stand-ins...even if they're picking their noses in the privacy of their cars (in a sight gag probably only Tati could have pulled off).
Mr. Hulot only appeared in four feature-length movies. It is Tati's genius that in less than 500 minutes he gave us such a memorable and appealing human being. Tati's layering of sight gags is unique and often intensely and unexpectedly funny. With Trafic, however, I found my interest more intellectual than anything else. There were stretches of the film that simply weren't all that engaging. And this, of course, is all just opinion.
Jacques Tati's movies are classics to be treasured. The Criterion two-disc release has a fine DVD color transfer and an assortment of interesting extras that include a major documentary on the Hulot character. There is a substantial essay on Trafic in an enclosed booklet. The author, Jonathan Romney, writes that Trafic has a melancholy quality. He's right.
Trafic In "Trafic," Jacques Tati's continuing commentary on modern society, M. Hulot works for automaker Altra. The camper he designed is to be on show at an international auto exhibition in Amsterdam. Getting to Amsterdam, though, is the challenge, and the film charts that comical course. The sleek, ultramodern, overly gadgetized camper is transported in a rundown, beat-up old van that either runs out of gas, blows out a tire, or just completely breaks down. Whether it's accidents or border patrol, there just is no easy way to get to the auto show! Along for the ride is driver Marcel, PR person Maria Kimberly, and Maria's mop of a dog, Piton.
This is a Tati movie, thus there is always a lot to look at: sight gags, little ironies, etc. As is characteristic of the director, there are no close-ups of the actors because they are a part of a much larger whole. Yet given that, Maria Kimberly remarkably steals almost every scene that she is in with her exaggerated mannerisms and pose. I couldn't take my eyes off her the entire time; she was so hilariously affected. One gets the feeling that Tati, to the film's detriment, also was distracted by that character's comedic possibilities. Therefore we seem to have less of those priceless moments that we have come to treasure from the Hulot movies.
That's a small quibble, however. In the end, though I may prefer Mon Oncle and Playtime, even a slightly off-the-mark Tati film is time well spent watching...and rewatching...and rewatching.
More fun from Tati - not spectacular, but solid. Good fun, not a masterpiece like Mon Oncle or Playtime, but if you like Tati's other stuff, it's a must have.
Trafic finally gets the presentation it deserves If you have made it this far, you will want to own this DVD. While not one of Tati's best, it is still an entertaining and charming movie. The extras alone are worth the DVD price: interviews with the cast and a fascinating interview with Tati himself, who reprises some of his best mime routines. Regarding the movie itself: I was stunned at not only the quality of the picture (sharp with bright colors), but the fact my VHS tape was missing about 15% of the frame on all four sides, not to mention having a horizontally stretched picture. So, aside from the much-improved picture quality, there is actually 15% more movie to see! Buy this DVD (and the others from Criterion, if you don't have them), and show Criterion that their efforts with regard to Tati are appreciated.
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