(Part of The Complete Jacques Tati)
Distributor: The Criterion Collection
Release Date: October 28, 2014
MSRP: $124.95
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Film: B+ / Video: B / Audio: B+ / Extras: B+
After the surprising and clashing cynicism of Trafic, the good-natured elegy of Parade is refreshing. More than that, it captures the simple thrill of watching an experienced artist demonstrating that his skills haven’t stiffened with age, but adapted. After de-emphasizing his on-screen presence for more than a decade, Jacques Tati takes center stage as the ringleader for a circus playing in Stockholm, and the acrobatic frenzy of his early film work transforms into elegantly small but unmissable displays of total body control.
Tati updates his music-hall act from his early days, and it’s fascinating to see how his vaudeville days shaped the dense, ostensibly pure-cinema nature of his work, and how his time in film now updates his stage show. Sound, of course, plays a key role, and it’s amusing to see how Tati uses traditional instrumentation as the butt of gags (in one of the funniest acts, acrobats in hockey gear interrupt a chamber combo) as well as to create sound effects for his miming, while creating music through strange objects like squeaking balloons or squeak horns.
Unlike Tati’s more recent films, the director returns to his status as a visible, primary performer. As the ringleader, he plays various athletes in competition against unseen foes: a swiftly dispatched boxer, or a goalkeeper who spends most of his time on the pitch in a state of boredom so deep it causes his entire body to roll with his eyes before snapping to attention when needed, moving so quickly that he forgets himself and crashing into the side of the net. Intriguingly, Tati also stages a comic variant of the despairing end of Blow-Up, turning an imaginary tennis match into an act of pure whimsy, one that calls upon an entire audience to play along as they turn their heads back and forth to follow the nonexistent ball.
The involvement of the audience is a critical aspect of the film. Tati’s previous two features were wide-canvas works that took aim at vast social failures, but Parade shrinks its scale to the occupants of a single circus tent. Even so, the director envisions a great, participatory role from the audience as much as the performers, creating a huge cast out of actor plants and civilians. Their planned and unplanned involvement becomes the film’s thematic crux, a visual representation of the role that the spectator plays not simply in watching art but providing it with a context. When audience members are called down (or come into the ring of their own desire), their direct action symbolizes the act of interpretation, of the fact that art belongs to the consumer as much as the creator.
Admittedly, the act may not be the best in the world; the parts of the movie that incorporate hippies perpetuate the view that Tati admires hippies as a concept more than he understands them. Nonetheless, it’s pleasing to see an old artist’s swan song be so generous to and appreciative of the young as a perpetual means of shaking up the status quo, even if they will eventually resolve to a new one. There is a childlike energy to most of the picture, typified by the active participation of two kids who do not see the divide between them as audience members and the actual performers. They represent an audience at its purest, and the little boy in the couple has the film’s best moment: after a host of adults rushed down from the crowd to try and ride an unruly donkey who flees and kicks at those who chase after him, the boy calmly strides down, walks up amiably to the animal, feeds it, and gets on the now-tamed beast. In a filmography filled with ambitious sight gags and deft physicality, this tranquil moment stands as arguably the single most exhilarating thing Tati ever shot.
A/V
Given the multiple formats used, image consistency is unavoidably negligible, and the video shots have obviously aged worst of all. Still, Tati gleans a surprisingly rich color palette even out of the then-nascent format, while the 16mm and 35mm shots naturally sport more depth, stabler movement and finer texture. Having said that, the feature flows together as well as possible with this 2K transfer, and on occasion shots that looked as good as 16mm were revealed with sudden movement to be video. Audio fares better, but the more natural, immediate recording conditions results in the first Tati film to have sound at least slightly outside his control. I couldn’t discern any issues, however, and the diegetically produced aural gags mostly sound as clear as the precise studio effects of Tati’s other films.
Extras
Stéphane Goudet was sorely missed from the Trafic extras, a film that could have used his lucid insight to provide a defense for its shakier aspects. But he does contribute an essay here, “In the Ring,” and it’s predictably rewarding, balancing basic information about the circumstances of the production with how it affected and altered Tati’s pre-existing style. “In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot,” previously available on the old Trafic DVD, is a 2-hour documentary directed by Sophie Tatischeff, Tati’s daughter, that charts Hulot’s development and eventual retirement. “An Homage to Jacques Tati” comes from a 1982 French TV epsiode that interviews Tati’s set designer, Jacques Lagrange, as he reminisces about the late director.
Overall
Jacques Tati’s final film is a beautiful send-off, a messy tribute to art and the people who support it, and Criterion’s disc gives its technologically scattershot look a sublime presentation.