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In English, Tati Confronts Modern Times

By DAVE KEHR
Published: June 20, 2005

When Jacques Tati's comic masterpiece "Mon Oncle" opened in New York City on Nov. 3, 1958, it was presented in two versions: patrons of the Baronet Theater could see "Mon Oncle" with English subtitles, while at the Guild patrons could see "My Uncle," a substantially different version of the film prepared by Tati for English-speaking audiences.
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"Mon Oncle" has since become a classic, but "My Uncle" was filed away and forgotten, at least until last year, when its original negative was discovered in Tati's archives. The badly damaged negative was restored by Tati's estate, and the resulting print - in bright, beautiful color - will have its second worldwide premiere tonight at the Museum of Modern Art. After a celebratory screening at 8:30 p.m., presented by Jérôme Deschamps and Macha Makeïeff, the Tati estate's caretakers, the film will return on Wednesday for daily screenings through Sunday. (Showtimes and other information are available at www.moma.org.)

One of the most painstaking, meticulous artists the movies have produced, Tati obsessed over every detail of his creations, making only five theatrical features between his 1949 debut, "Jour de Fête," and his final film, "Trafic," in 1971. Though "My Uncle" doesn't fully qualify as an independent work, it does represent a thorough rethinking of "Mon Oncle."

A first viewing suggests dozens of variations between the two films. Most obviously, Tati reshot several scenes, using English signs - "School," "Way Out" - instead of the French "École" and "Sortie." But there are many other, more subtle differences: entire sequences appear in one version but not the other, and scenes are shot and edited for different effect.

"Mon Oncle" imagines a culture in transition between the cluttered, chaotic and pleasure-oriented old Paris neighborhood where Tati's character, the reedy, pipe-smoking Monsieur Hulot, maintains his bachelor residence, and the sterile, modern, oppressively efficient suburbs where Hulot's beloved 12-year-old nephew (Alain Bécourt) lives with his parents, the upwardly mobile Arpels (Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie).

The French version seems evenly balanced between the two realms, though Tati's sentimental preference for the litter-strewn streets of the old quartier is clear. There appears to be less of that litter in the English version, and less occasion for the two worlds to meet: the scruffy, rotund greengrocer who calls on the Arpels in the French version does not appear in the English film at all, and the stray dogs that freely and gleefully cross the border seem to have had their range curtailed.

In place of these elements, the English version builds up the satire on modern life. A brief scene in which Madame Arpel dresses in a nurse's uniform to serve her son a hygienic meal is extended in the English film to include a few more swipes at such burdensome so-called conveniences as hand-held plate sterilizers.

Most tellingly, perhaps, Tati largely restricts the English dialogue to the world of the Arpels. They and their friends now speak almost exclusively in British-accented English, while French remains the language of the old city: of Hulot, his neighbors, the children and (one feels strangely certain) the dogs. Fifty years ago, Tati had already recognized English as the language of globalization, of the erasure of the cultural quirks and individual eccentricities that were his principal objects of delight.

In the end, "My Uncle" seems as much a gentle rebuke of the English-speaking audience as a friendly gesture toward it. Though dialogue is not a crucial element in either version ("Mon Oncle" can be fully enjoyed without subtitles), Tati is using it here to draw a line of demarcation, another border between the old world and the new, between a waning Europe and an economically emerging United States. For Tati, a supreme visual artist, language is just another part of the image.

Tati: celebrating France's comic genius of film:

PARIS (AFP) - Newly restored copies of Jacques Tati's 1958 masterpiece "My Uncle" ("Mon Oncle"), including an original English version missing for decades, premiere in Paris on Wednesday, part of the run up to a centennial celebration of France's great comic film genius.

Inspired by the silent era gags of Buster Keaton and the wry humor W.C. Fields, both giants of American comedy, Tati forged in the 1940s and 1950s a comic universe all his own.

At its center is Tati's alter ego and anti-modern hero, the unflappable, unfailingly polite Monsieur Hulot.

Armed with his signature pipe and trench coat, the gracefully bumbling Hulot embodies for Tati a noble but loosing struggle against the dehumanizing forces of modern management and unbridled consumerism.

In "My Uncle," the second in a quartet of Hulot films spanning two decades, these corrupting trends are embodied in our hero's brother-in-law and sister, he a preening executive in a rubber hose factory, she a fastidious housewife reigning over an austere and ultra-automated modern house ripped straight from the pages of a trendy architecture magazine.

The unemployed Hulot lives in an makeshift, roof-top apartment in a run-down part of town full of scruffy dogs and even scruffier children, a real French neighborhood where lifelong neighbors bargain and bicker in the market, and greet every passerby.

This is Tati's paradise, an endangered natural habitat soon to be steam-rollered by the American-inspired forces of Progress with a capital "P".

His Hulot feels out of place in this sterile brave new world, expressing not so much contempt but bewilderment at its misplaced values.

"You don't seem to be able to adjust," his brother-in-law says with a mix of exasperation and pity when Hulot gets himself fired after one day at the rubber hose factory.

Tati's films are short of plot and even shorter on dialogue, driven instead by painstaking composition of image, an original use of sound and a visual comedies-of-error that never fail to surprise.

But "My Uncle" does have a dramatic core, the struggle for the soul of Hulot's young nephew Gerard, chided by his humorless parents for exactly the qualities Hulot encourages by his very being: playfulness, humility, joie de vivre.

The English version -- thought to be lost until a tattered copy was found by accident and restored -- is more than a curiosity, and Tati spent a year in post-production making it.

Much of what is lampooned in "My Uncle" came from the late 1950's America of big, shiny cars and full-throated consumerism, and Tati clearly intended to confront the Anglo-Saxon world with his judgment on it excesses.

The film was, in fact, both a critical and a commercial success, garnering the special jury prize at the Cannes film festival in 1958 and a best foreign film Oscar the following year.

The rights to the entire Tati oeuvre were purchased not long ago by relatives and friends of the film maker, who died in 1982 penniless after his later films -- critically acclaimed -- flopped at the box office.

Their association (www.tativille.com) is refurbishing his work reel-by-reel, partly in preparation for the 2007 centennial of his birth, when Tati's comic genius will be celebrated in various events around the world.

4LOM wrote:Only the individual release of "Mon Oncle" features the restored "My Uncle" version.

Faux Hulot wrote:Call me dense, but -- are you saying that edition actually contains the English-language My Uncle? I must be thick because I can't find that version for sale anywhere.

4LOM wrote:

Faux Hulot wrote:Call me dense, but -- are you saying that edition actually contains the English-language My Uncle? I must be thick because I can't find that version for sale anywhere.

The German 2 disc edition contains the shorter English-language "My Uncle" and the original French "Mon Oncle"! You can find this one at amazon.de.

Didn't think I would get much from watching these Hulot movies, yet now I want to see "Playtime" on Blu-ray and "Trafic" (a StudioCanal OOP victim #-o) ASAP