The Definitive Jacques Tati

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Oscar-winning French director/performer Jacques Tati (1907-1982) was a fiercely innovative and original filmmaker who found inspiration in the observation of life around him. By creating and playing unassuming characters thrown into the bustle of society-the hapless postman Franois and the maladroit Monsieur Hulot-Tati brilliantly exposed the ways in which class distinctions, social mores, architecture, and technology affect the basic ways that humans relate to one another.

Unlike Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, to whom he has frequently been compared, Tati took the everyday and recreated it, layered organically with visual and audio gags, for the audience to actively observe. His early work as a mime taught him how to generate laughter without words; in his films he used gestures, facial expressions, costumes, props, sets, sounds, music-everything but dialogue-to do the talking.

Tati's films are truly universal and accessible to anyone, anywhere, who can appreciate the comedy of modern life. Tati once said "I want the film to begin when you leave the theater." His greatest achievement was to show us that together, as the whole of humanity, we are characters starring in the greatest spectacle of all: life itself.

In 2000, Macha Makeeff and Jrme Deschamps founded Les Films de Mon Oncle with the late Sophie Tatisheff, daughter of Tati, to preserve and promote Tati's archives and legacy. This definitive exploration of Tati's life and work, made possible by the complete and unprecedented access to the archives that they provided TASCHEN, features hundreds of photographs and film stills, the complete screenplays, interviews, original essays, and a vast selection of documents, letters, sketches, and notes spanning five volumes.

Designed by M/M (Paris), the set includes: Volume I, 'Tati Films': stills from all six feature films Volume II, 'Tati Writes': the complete screenplays, plus those of the unmade films The Illusionist and Confusion, illustrated by pages from Tati's original drafts Volume III, 'Tati Works': a comprehensive survey of his life and work Volume IV, 'Tati Explores': essays on important themes in his films Volume V, 'Tati Speaks': quotations, interviews, and a previously unpublished memoir by Tati

Reviews

A suitable monument to Tati's lifework. * Harpers Magazine *
This box set covers every aspect of his creativity from sketches and sets to stills of the magical films, interviews and essays. Seductively designed by M/M Paris, it is big, expensive and pretty much the perfect present. * The Financial Times *
When you watch his films, you realize how much he knows about-and loved-human nature, and it can only be an inspiration to do the same. * David Lynch *

Author Bio

Writer and editor Alison Castle studied philosophy, photography, and film at Columbia (B.A.) and NYU (M.A.). Her publications include The Stanley Kubrick Archives, Stanley Kubricks Napoleon, and The Complete Jacques Tati, and her writing has appeared in Gagosian Quarterly, Vogue Italia, Vogue China, The Road Rat, and Chaos 69. She is also the president of Wendell Castle Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the late artist's legacy and archives.