Approx advert and trailer run time: 25 mins Film run time: 2h04min Part of the ‘A Cinematic Odyssey: Postcards from Europe’ strand. Jacques Tati’s immense, dreamlike masterpiece on modern life arrives on the screen it deserves – and demands. In the mid-1960s, the man internationally famous as French comedy icon Monsieur Hulot used his reputation to sink 17 million francs, and several years, into the world of this film: an airport-sized city of grey and white colours, structured with only straight lines, and awesomely inhuman in its scale, cleanliness, and uniformity. A large cast of people either operate its incomprehensible systems or, like Hulot, blunder through it like hamsters in a maze, running afoul of its byzantine logic. Tati views this on a huge (70mm) scale, showing them all from a distance, weaving an intricate web of farces and breakdowns, often playing out several in one shot. Setting people against such a huge, faceless modern background makes an obvious point about the dehumanising effects of modern living. It also, however, makes their humanity shine by comparison, as the system slowly unravels, and the natural order of chaos reasserts itself. Tati portrays people with satire, sympathy, and scope that few films match, and its gigantic size and depth of detail can only be thoroughly appreciated in a cinema. (Research Dominic Bannister) The film will be introduced by Dr Paul Sutton, who will stay for the end of the film for a post- screening discussion in the auditorium.
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