Tati, Jacques

Tati, Jacques (1908-1982), French actor and film director, widely regarded as the greatest French comic actor since Max Linder. Born Jacques Tatischeff near Paris into a Russian aristocratic family, Tati enjoyed a good education and excelled in sports, particularly rugby and football. He made good use of his athletic talents in his early career in cabarets and music-halls.

In 1946 Tati was chosen by Claude Autant-Lara for the lead role in Sylvie et les Fantômes. The short film L'École des Facteurs (1947) prefigured the famous Jour de Fête (1949; The Big Day)—both of which Tati also directed. The latter offered a revealing insight into Tati's acute powers of observation and comic gifts. Like Linder, he portrays a middle-class world, but Tati's version is a place where the dignity of the individual is under threat from the spread of mechanization. In Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953; Mr Hulot's Holiday) and Mon Oncle (1958; My Uncle), his alter ego/hero Monsieur Hulot is never responsible for the results of his actions: a kindly, bumbling bohemian, he confronts the assaults of depersonalizing modern life with determined bafflement. After Mon Oncle, Tati made only three films: Playtime (1968), Traffic (1971), and Parade (1974); the latter received the Grand Prix of French Cinema. Tati was a strict and exacting perfectionist, and each film took several years to complete.

In later life, Tati was not without financial difficulties, and his attempts to adapt his beloved Hulot to the harsher climate of the late 20th century met with less success. In 1979, Tati was awarded the Grand Prix National des Arts et des Lettres.