MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (Venue Partner)
11 W 53rd St
212.708.9400
This event has passed.
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Still from Mon Oncle, 1958
- When
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Dec 18, 2009 – Jan 2, 2010
Daily
- Where
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- Price
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$10
- Links
The Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective of the French screenwriter, director, and actor Jacques Tati (born Jacques Tatischeff, 1907–1982) features newly struck, gloriously restored 35mm prints of his six feature films—Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Playtime, Mon Oncle, his long-dreamed-of colorized version of Jour de fête, the revelatory Traffic, and the little-seen Parade—along with three short sketch films. One of cinema’s greatest comedians, Tati was also one of its most radical modernists.
As many critics have observed, Tati plays the straight man to an absurdly comical world, with his loping, springy gait (where is he, a man with no discernable ambitions, heading with such purpose?)—always at the ready with his raincoat, highwater trousers, pipe and hat, a fishing rod or umbrella in hand, and always alone in a crowd, whether at a seaside resort or in a steely modernist office building, stuck in a traffic jam or returning to his salad days of pantomime on the circus stage. He creates an entire cosmos, a meticulously choreographed chaos in a Cartesian world, and a singularly new, transformative, and democratic way of experiencing the moving image. In this way, as in so many others, Tati celebrates the importance of being playful.
