Jacques Tati

Trafic

Trafic

In Jacques Tati’s Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, kitted out as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’s highways and byways. In this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new product (a “camping car” outfitted with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road there is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’s expert timing and sidesplitting knack for visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1971
  • 97 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.37:1
  • French
  • Spine #439

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • “Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot’s Work,” a 1976 episode of the British television program Omnibus featuring an interview with Tati about his Hulot films
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation

Available In

Collector's Set

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Complete Jacques Tati

Blu-ray Box Set

7 Discs

$87.46

Collector's Set

The Complete Jacques Tati

The Complete Jacques Tati

DVD Box Set

12 Discs

$87.46

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • “Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot’s Work,” a 1976 episode of the British television program Omnibus featuring an interview with Tati about his Hulot films
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
Trafic
Cast
Jacques Tati
Monsieur Hulot
Maria Kimberly
Maria
Tony Knepper
Mechanic
Marcel Fraval
Truck driver
Honoré Bostel
Director of Altra
François Maisongrosse
François
Credits
Director
Jacques Tati
Producer
Robert Dorfmann
Screenplay
Jacques Tati
With the artistic collaboration of
Jacques Lagrange
And the participation of
Bert Haanstra
Directors of photography
Edward van den Enden
Directors of photography
Marcel Weiss
Camera operators
Paul Rodier
Camera operators
Anton van Munster
Editors
Maurice Laumain
Editors
Sophie Tatischeff
Sound
Ed Pelster
Sound
Alain Curvelier
Sound mixer
Jean Nény
Music
Charles Dumont
Set designer
Adrien De Rooy

Current

Jacques Tati: Things Fall Together
Jacques Tati: Things Fall Together

In cinema history, there truly is no gag like a Tati gag.

By David Cairns

Jacques Tati, Historian
Jacques Tati, Historian

Tati’s witty visual comedy also functioned as satire of a rapidly modernizing postwar France.

By Kristin Ross

Jacques Tati: Composing in Sound and Image
Jacques Tati: Composing in Sound and Image

What you hear is as crucial—and as funny—as what you see in Tati’s films.

By Jonathan Rosenbaum

Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati
Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati

Though he emerged from established stage and screen comedy traditions, Tati invented a completely new filmic language.

By James Quandt

Lions in Winter
Lions in Winter
Some of cinema’s most revered directors enjoyed extraordinary bursts of creative energy during their twilight years, delivering films that showcase a mastery of the craft they had honed over their long careers. This week on the Criterion Channel, o…
A Moment with Jacques Tati

Flashbacks

A Moment with Jacques Tati

The author recalls meeting the filmmaker in a Swedish hotel in the ’70s.

By Peter Cowie

Explore

Jacques Tati

Writer, Actor, Director

Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati

It’s rare for a director’s physical appearance to be as iconic as Jacques Tati’s is. Not just the writer and director of a series of beloved French comedies—including M. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon oncle, Playtime, and Trafic—but their star, Tati embodied the befuddled, eternally umbrella-carrying and trench-coated Monsieur Hulot, perennially unable to adjust to a rapidly modernizing world, with empathy and a delightful comic precision. The latter trait was undoubtedly due to his early career as a mime in French music halls; when he switched to film, he adapted his penchant for mute comedy not only to his character but also to his directing style. There’s very little audible dialogue in Tati’s films, and their spare use of sound contributes to the overall sense they create of a forbidding, contemporary world in which Hulot feels adrift and superfluous. Add Tati’s brilliant knack for composition, expertise at choreographing deadpan slapstick, and grandiose vision (his 70 mm Playtime, one of the most expensive French productions in history to that point, bankrupted him), and you’ve got one of the most enjoyable, singular oeuvres in film.