TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 9 -- Jacques Tati's 101st Birthday

[Staph]

Another wonderful day, with a potfull of Oscar winners and nominees, including The Informer, the Greer Garson/Laurence Olivier Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet Me in St. Louis, and My Fair Lady. And this evening features the films of Jacques Tati, followed by a pair of Buster Keaton's best. Happy birthday, M. Tati! Enjoy!


4:30am -- The Informer (1935)
An Irish rebel turns in his best friend to earn passage money to America, then has to dodge the suspicions of his cohorts.
Cast: Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster.
Dir: John Ford.
BW-92 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Victor McLaglen, Best Director -- John Ford, Best Music, Score -- Max Steiner (head of departmment), Score by Max Steiner, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Dudley Nichols (Nichols refused to accept his award because of the antagonism between several industry guilds and the academy over union matters. This marked the first time an Academy Award had been declined. Academy records show that Dudley was in possession of an Oscar statuette by 1949.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- George Hively, and Best Picture

The day before shooting Gypo Nolan's trial scene, John Ford told Victor McLaglen that he wouldn't be needed the next day so he should take a break, enjoy himself, and not worry about his lines. McLaglen proceeded to go out drinking--which Ford knew he would do--and the next day was forced to film the scene with a terrible hangover, which was just the effect Ford wanted.


6:15am -- Jewel Robbery (1932)
A jewel thief falls for a tycoon's wife in Vienna.
Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Hardie Albright.
Dir: William Dieterle.
BW-68 mins, TV-G

Based on the Broadway play Jewel Robbery (1932), by Bertram Bloch, from the Hungarian play by Ladislas Fodor.


7:30am -- Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)
Sherlock Holmes fights to keep a new bombsite design from the Nazis.
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Lionel Atwill.
Dir: Roy William Neill.
BW-68 mins, TV-G

The lines that Holmes quotes at the end of the film are a condensed version of William Shakespeare's lines from Richard II.


8:45am -- Pride And Prejudice (1940)
Jane Austen's comic classic about five sisters out to nab husbands in 19th-century England.
Cast: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Edna May Oliver.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard.
BW-118 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Art Direction, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons and Paul Groesse

Phil Silvers was asked to screen test for a role as a vicar despite having a strong New York accent. It turned out to be a cruel prank by studio executives who passed the screen test around Hollywood. In his autobiography, Silvers says "These three minutes were perhaps the funniest I've ever done."


10:45am -- Double Wedding (1937)
A dress designer tries to break her sister's engagement to a free-living artist, only to discover the man is falling for her instead.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Florence Rice.
Dir: Richard Thorpe.
BW-87 mins, TV-G

Production was partially shut down because of the death (7 June 1937) of Jean Harlow, to whom William Powell was engaged.


12:15pm -- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
When he inherits a fortune, a small-town poet has to deal with the corruption of city life.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, Lionel Stander.
Dir: Frank Capra.
BW-116 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Director -- Frank Capra

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Gary Cooper, Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Robert Riskin

Columbia and Capra intended to make a sequel to this movie, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, entitled "Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington", based on the story "The Gentleman from Wyoming" (alternately called "The Gentleman from Montana" by both contemporary and modern sources) by Lewis Foster. This story was instead turned into the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), directed by Frank Capra and starring Arthur and James Stewart.


2:15pm -- Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
Young love and childish fears highlight a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family.
Cast: Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli.
C-113 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- George J. Folsey, Best Music, Original Song -- Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin for the song "The Trolley Song", Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- George E. Stoll, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe.

Director Vincente Minnelli worked hard to make the movie as accurate to the times as possible. Not only did its novelist, Sally Benson, give explicit directions as to the decor of her home down to the last detail, but the movie's costume designer took inspiration for many of the movies costumes right out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog from the time period.


4:15pm -- The Red Balloon (1956)
A boy discovers his new balloon has a mind of its own.
Cast: Pascal Lamorisse, Georges Sellier, Vladimir Popov.
Dir: Albert Lamorisse.
C-34 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Original -- Albert Lamorisse

With its Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay, the film is (as of 2007) the only short film to win to win an Academy Award outside of the short film categories.


5:00pm -- My Fair Lady (1964)
A phonetics instructor bets that he can pass a street urchin off as a lady.
Cast: Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Holloway.
Dir: George Cukor.
C-172 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Rex Harrison, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton and George James Hopkins, Best Cinematography, Color -- Harry Stradling Sr., Best Costume Design, Color -- Cecil Beaton, Best Director -- George Cukor, Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- André Previn, Best Sound -- George Groves (Warner Bros. SSD), and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Stanley Holloway, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gladys Cooper, Best Film Editing -- William H. Ziegler, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Alan Jay Lerner

According to actress Nancy Olson, who was married to lyricist Alan Jay Lerner at the time he was writing the musical, Lerner and Frederick Loewe had the most trouble writing the final song for Henry Higgins. The two writers had based the whole concept of the musical around the notion that Higgins was far too intellectual a character to emotionally sing outright, but should speak his songs on pitch, more as an expression of ideas. However, both composer and lyricist knew that Higgins would need a love song towards the end of the story when Eliza has abandoned him. This presented an obvious problem: how to write an emotional song for an emotionless character. Lerner suffered bouts of insomnia trying to write the lyrics. One night, Olson claims, she brought him a cup of tea to soothe his nerves. As she entered his study, Lerner thanked her and said "I guess I've grown accustomed to you...I've grown accustomed to your face." According to Olson, his eyes suddenly lit up, and she sat down and watched him write the entire song in one sitting, based on the idea that although Higgins couldn't "love" Eliza in the traditional sense, he would surely notice the value she represented as part of his life.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: JACQUES TATI'S 101ST BIRTHDAY


8:00pm -- Jour De Fête (1949)
A small town postman tries to adopt modern efficiency techniques.
Cast: Jacques Tati, Guy Decomble, Paul Frankeur.
Dir: Jacques Tati.
BW-80 mins

The movie was originally filmed in Thomson-color, a process that became extinct before prints of the film could be shown and was previously only available in a black and white version that was filmed as a precaution, in case the color process was not perfect. In 1995 the color copy was restored and published by Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff, and cinematographer François Ede.


9:45pm -- Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday) (1953)
Vacationers in a French resort town almost kill themselves trying to relax.
Cast: Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Michelle Rolla.
Dir: Jacques Tati.
BW-87 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Jacques Tati and Henri Marquet

The name of the hotel at which the guests stay is "The Hotel of the Beach".


11:15pm -- Mon Oncle (1956)
A bumbler who prefers the simple life takes on the new-fangled gadgets in his nephew's home.
Cast: Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie.
Dir: Jacques Tati.
C-116 mins, TV-14

Won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film

Outfitted in a raincoat and beaten hat and frequently chomping on a pipe, the clumsy but sweethearted Mr. Hulot wanders about constantly befuddled and bemused by the latest innovations in fashion and technology, and unknowingly causing minor catastrophes everywhere he goes with his absent-mindedness. Whether taking a vacation at the beach (Mr. Hulot's Holiday), visiting family in the city (Mon Oncle), going to a job interview (Playtime) or just driving down the highway (Trafic), Hulot finds new ways to accidentally point out the follies and eccentricities of modern living.


1:15am -- Playtime (1967)
Monsieur Hulot has to contact an American official in Paris, but he gets lost in the maze of modern architecture which is filled with the latest technical gadgets.
Cast:Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden.
Dir: Jacques Tati.
C-124 mins.

This film was added to Roger Ebert's Great Movies list in August, 2004.



3:30am -- The General (1927)
In this silent film, a Confederate engineer fights to save his train and his girlfriend from the Union army.
Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender.
Dir: Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman.
BW-75 mins, TV-G

Based on a true incident during the Civil War. In April 1862, Union agent James J. Andrews led a squad of 21 soldiers on a daring secret raid. Dressed in civilian clothes, Andrews and his men traveled by rail into the Southern states. Their mission was to sabotage rail lines and disrupt the Confederate army's supply chain. At the town of Little Shanty, GA, the raiders stole a locomotive known as "The General." They headed north, tearing up track, burning covered bridges and cutting telegraph lines along the way. William Fuller and Jeff Cain, the conductor and engineer of "The General," pursued the stolen train by rail and foot. They first used a hand-cart (as Buster Keaton does in the film), then a small work locomotive called "The Yonah," which they borrowed from a railroad work crew, and finally a full-sized Confederate army locomotive called "The Texas," which pursued "The General" for 51 miles--in reverse. During the chase, Confederate soldiers were able to repair the sabotaged telegraph wires and send messages ahead of the raiders. Andrews and his men were intercepted and captured near Chattanooga, TN, by a squad of Confederate troops led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest (who, after the war, was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan). Tried as spies, Andrews and seven of his raiders were hanged (a special gallows was built to hold all eight men). The rest of the raiders were traded in a prisoner exchange. In 1863 the survivors of the mission were awarded the first Congressional Medals of Honor (Andrews and the raiders who had been hanged later received the CMH posthumously).


4:45am -- The Navigator (1924)
In this silent film, two members of the idle rich have to move fast when they're stranded on an abandoned luxury liner.
Cast: Buster Keaton, Frederick Vroom, Kathryn McGuire.
Dir: Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton.
BW-60 mins, TV-G

The idea for this film began when Buster Keaton learned of a large passenger ship that was due to be scrapped. Seeing an opportunity, he purchased the ship for a low price and proceeded to build a story around this massive prop.

[Staph]

1. Jacques Tati Profile

An enduring icon of the French cinema, actor Jacques Tati trademarked the character of Monsieur Hulot, the droll ordinary Frenchman, blithely pursuing his modest pleasures, seemingly oblivious to the pitfalls of modern society that surround him. Director Tati crafted a style of understated visual comedy that has influenced a generation in his wake.

Born on October 9, 1907, in the community of LePecq (about eleven miles west of Paris), he was named Jacques Tatischeff. As his name suggests, he was of Russian lineage, his paternal grandfather being the Russian ambassador to France. An art framer by profession, Tati's father, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff, married a Dutch woman named Marcelle Claire Van Hoof.

As a young man, Tati was a sports enthusiast, playing tennis, rugby, and boxing, educated at the Lycee de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Rather than follow his father's career path, Tati became a professional rugby player for the Racing Club de Paris in 1925.

An apocryphal tale suggests that it was in a locker room that Tati was inspired to pursue a show business career. He so impressed his teammates with pantomimic recreations of his sporting achievements that they encouraged him to take his talents to the public. It was on the music hall stage that Tati, like most great screen comedians (including Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, and yes, Jerry Lewis), refined his craft, mimicking prominent athletes of the day. Having found his professional calling, Tati left the Racing Club team in 1930.

Always fascinated by technology, Tati experimented with filming some of his comic performances. Among his earliest efforts was the short film Oscar, champion de tennis (Oscar: Tennis Champion, 1932, directed by Jack Forrester), patterned after one of his sports-themed stage routines.

During the 1930s, Tati collaborated with several filmmakers, including René Clément, who would later direct the acclaimed drama Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits, 1952). Together they filmed a boxing comedy, Soigne ton gauche (Watch Your Left, 1936).

Tati put his career on hold during World War II, enlisting in the French Army in 1939. During the Nazi Occupation of Paris, Tati found refuge from German persecution in a small town outside Paris. Tati would later return to the town and use it as the location for his first feature film. Near the end of the war (on May 25, 1944), Tati married Micheline Winter, who remained his wife until the filmmaker's death in 1982.

After the war, Tati redoubled his efforts for a career in cinema. He began appearing in supporting roles in commercial features, such as Claude Autant-Lara's Devil in the Flesh (Le Diable au corps, 1947).

Having gained the necessary technical and aesthetic experience, Tati seated himself for the first time alone in the director's chair (he had co-directed 1935's Gai dimanche with Jacques Berr). The film was L'Ecole des facteurs (School for Postmen, 1947), and it set his feature filmmaking career in motion. The tale of a small-town letter-carrier who attempts to streamline his delivery methods, it embodied the low-key comedic flavor as well as the overarching theme -- of an everyman adapting to the modernized world -- that would characterize Tati's later work.

The popularity of L'Ecole des facteurs enabled Tati to fund an expanded, feature-length version of the story. Renamed Jour de fete (1949), it revived many of the comic situations of the short film (inspired by the silent comedians of yesteryear), and allowed Tati a broader canvas to flesh out the town of Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre as a microcosm of the contemporary world. Constructing an allegorical world would become a major preoccupation of Tati's. The small towns, quaint neighborhoods and sterile cities would become essential ingredients in his films.

At this point, Tati continued to build his career as methodically as a brick mason, each new film building upon the success of the previous, each one expanding the range of his audience and the degree of critical favor.

The critical and popular response to Jour de fete encouraged the making of another feature, which propelled Tati to international prominence: Mr. Hulot's Holiday (Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, 1953). This was the first screen appearance of M. Hulot, the on-screen persona with whom Tati was most closely identified throughout his career.

With his long-stemmed pipe, raincoat and hat, Hulot is a lovable embodiment of the French working class, happy in his own modest world, not tempted by the modern luxuries and class consciousness that consume the bourgeoisie.

Rather than accelerate the pace of his films through editing and emphasize his gags with closeups, Tati was content to frame the action in uninterrupted wide shots, allowing the comedy to play out in a stage-like setting. Instead of being walloped with jokes, the viewer is called upon to carefully observe each moment, and find the bits of comedy hidden within. The leisurely pace of Tati's films helps the viewers appreciate the simple pleasures that the director felt were going unnoticed in mid-20th century life. Tati once remarked that "nobody whistles on the streets anymore." It might be said that Tati's films are an elaborate effort to revive the spirit of such a simple pleasure.

In an essay on Tati's career, Jaime N. Christley recounts an apocryphal story of Tati's ancestors, how Tati's Russian grandmother had "infiltrated Moscow to rescue Tati's father, then only a small boy, from the Tatischeffs who'd abducted him and previously brought about the death of Tati's grandfather." Christley observes, "That sort of international intrigue, sweeping romance, tragedy, and sheer convoluted storytelling, is by and large missing from the years Jacques Tati spent on the planet, and from his art: as magnificent and beautiful as his films are, they maintain a modest, gentlemanly tone. There is almost no drama at all in Tati's films -- even when Hulot's brother-in-law in Mon Oncle (1958), Monsieur Arpel (Jean-Pierre Zola), raises his voice in anger, the film's vital signs don't fluctuate for a moment."

The four years that passed between the releases of Jour de fete and Mr. Hulot's Holiday signify the precision and care with which Tati crafted his films. Though simple on the surface, each setting and situation was meticulously engineered by Tati. Because he did not want to be hindered by the oppressive schedules of studio production, Tati maintained his creative independence at all costs. He shot his films in small towns and privately-constructed sets instead of studio backlots, forbidding entry to reporters and publicity agents. He avoided working with established actors to further evade the public eye. When an American television company offered Tati a contract to produce a series of Hulot shorts, he declined.

The minimal dialogue in Mr. Hulot's Holiday allowed it to play to American audiences typically resistant to foreign films, and provided Tati with the resources to expand his cinematic vision. The film earned Tati an Oscar® nomination for Best Screenplay, and was a finalist for the Grand Prix at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, but it won neither.

M. Hulot returned to the screen in Mon Oncle. As if coming back to claim the prizes that had been denied him in the previous film, Mon Oncle was awarded a Special Jury Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (among numerous other honors). Again, Tati's ambitions had expanded, as did the size of his audience, as did the amount of time between films (now five years).

His next film proved to be, by far, his most ambitious to date -- so ambitious that the scale of Tati's vision seemed to overwhelm the simplicity of his stories. Shot in 70mm with stereophonic sound, Play Time (1967) took nine years to complete, and required the construction of enormous chrome and glass sets to depict an ultra-modern, impersonal urban landscape. In order to raise the production funds, Tati sold off the rights of his previous films.

The first cut of the film ran 155 minutes but, after a disappointing debut, Play Time underwent immediate and extensive cutting. When it finally reached the U.S., it had been shortened by more than an hour. It was released in 35mm, with conventional monaural sound.

Play Time disrupted the economic foundation Tati had methodically laid. Since he had surrendered the rights to his previous films, invested his own funds, and obtained loans from others, he had little clout with which to pursue another feature.

But Tati's vision endured. With some difficulty, Tati raised the funds to shoot Trafic (Traffic, 1971). It allowed him to prove that his sensibility and sense of humor were as sharp as ever, and were not dependent upon large-scale production. Abandoning the custom-designed mega-sets, the five-year production spans, and epic running time, Tati created a film that is remarkable in its utter simplicity. It follows the character of M. Hulot (in his final screen appearance) as he drives from Paris to Amsterdam to attend an international auto show.

Upon its original American release, Roger Ebert wrote, "Tati's endless invention creates a series of incidents along the road. The incidents are so involved they're almost impossible to describe, but Hulot copes with them with good nature and never loses his philosophical equilibrium."

Trafic helped restore Tati's reputation, but it did not expand his filmmaking opportunities. His final film, Parade (1974) was produced for Swedish television. Contrary to Tati's expectations, it was not given a theatrical release, but has since been resurrected and given its due as the legendary director's true final feature.

At the time of his death, Tati was working on another project, with the help of American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. This would-be film, entitled Confusion, promised to explore his darker sensibilities about modern life.

Set within the world of telecommunication and advertising, it has M. Hulot being accidentally killed (on live television) in the first act.

Before filming could begin, Tati himself died -- on November 5, 1982, in Paris, of a pulmonary embolism.

Fortunately, Tati's legacy is carefully protected by his children: assistant director Pierre Tati and editor Sophie Tatischeff. Efforts to preserve the filmmaker's body of work include the 1995 restoration of the color version of Jour de fete and the 2002 restoration of Play Time. As the full breadth of Tati's vision continues to be brought to light, his impact on film history seem more significant, his insights into modern society more profound, and his flair for capturing life's simple pleasure even more poetic.

by Bret Wood