TRAFFIC

France, 1971, 96 minutes, Colour.
Jacques Tati, Toni Knepper, Maria Kimberley, Marcel Franbal.
Directed by Jacques Tati.

Jacques Tati directed only eight films over a period of almost forty years. However, he also acted as a writer and performed in some films. His 1935 film was Gai Dimanche. After World War Two he directed School For Postmen and then The Big Day in 1949. However, it was in 1953 that he made his mark both in France and internationally with M.Hulot’s Holiday. He reintroduced the character of M. Hulot in Mon Oncle in 1958. He also directed Playtime in 1967 and this film in 1971, reintroducing M. Hulot. (The Italian title of the film was M. Hulot in the Traffic Chaos.)

Tati was magnificent as a mime. His films rely more on screen presence, acting and mime than on words. This is true of M. Hulot’s Holiday where everything goes wrong as well as Mon Oncle where Tati/M. Hulot gets involved with all kinds of technology.

In Traffic, M. Hulot has been an inventor, creating a car with all kinds of interesting and futuristic technology. While a truck driver takes his car to Amsterdam for an exhibition, Tati drives alongside in the company of the rather arrogant Maria. As might be expected, everything that could go wrong on a trip between Paris and Amsterdam does go wrong. M. Hulot, however, copes as usual. Maria becomes more humane and sympathetic.

It has been pointed out that the French are not very good at self-parody. That is not their sense of humour. However, Jacques Tati is an excellent example of a Frenchman who is able to pick up the nuances and mannerisms of French character and personality, French images of themselves and was to present them in sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh comic manner – for the French to laugh at as well as for the whole world to enjoy.

I. What was Jacques Tati's reason for making this film? Is it a comedy? A satire? A lock at modern life? All of these? What was the main impact it made?

2. Comment on Tati’s setting, the world of cars and the road, of advertising and salesmen, of the ordinary people involved with cars? How important was the plot to this film?

3. How important were persons in this film? Did persons predominate over machines? Monsieur Hulot? His awkwardness and comedy? His humanity and pathos, his relationship to car shows and salesmen, to police and customs men, to the public relations girl? How important was the public relations girl for the film? The salesmen, the drivers, the police?

4. How humorously did the film explore human foibles? Poke fun at them? Modern mechanised man? Monsieur Hulot as the little man of modern society?

5. What attitude did the film take to cars? In favour or not? Cars as machines at service of people? Dominating them? Controlling their way of life, of thinking, styles? Life on the roads? The significance of the name traffic and its overtones?

6. What comment did the film have on the luxury of cars, caravans etc? and the repercussions of this on human beings?

7. What comments did the film make on speed and its relationship to people and its effect on them?

8. The presentation of advertising and public relations, truth and falsity, again the effect on people?

9. What kind of society do we have today with the influence of the car, efficiency, mechanisation?

10. How strong was the satire in the film? What mere the main lessons of the satire?