Jacques Tati was a French director born in Le Pecq, celebrated for meticulously choreographed visual comedies built around minimal dialogue and elaborate sound design. Mr. Hulot's Holiday introduced his recurring alter ego, the gently bumbling Monsieur Hulot, whose disruptive presence at a seaside resort established Tati's precise, almost silent-film-like visual comic style. Mon Oncle extended Hulot's gentle satire of modern consumerism and sterile architectural design, while PlayTime, an enormously expensive and elaborately constructed production built around a giant purpose-made set of a hyper-modern Paris, remains one of the most ambitious comic films ever attempted, despite near-bankrupting its director on release. Tati's precise visual choreography, in which sound and background action mattered as much as any single joke, made him one of the most technically influential comic filmmakers after the silent era. Read more