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(French: [tati]; born pronounced [tatiʃɛf]; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982)[1] was a French mime, filmmaker, actor and screenwriter. In an Entertainment Weekly poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted the 46th greatest of all time (out of 50), although he directed only six feature-length films.
Tati is perhaps best known for his character Monsieur Hulot, featured in Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) and Trafic (1971). Playtime ranked 23rd in the 2022 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films ever made.[2]
As David Bellos puts it, "Tati, from l'Ecole des facteurs to Playtime, is the epitome of what an auteur is (in film theory) supposed to be: the controlling mind behind a vision of the world on film".[3]
Family origins[edit]
Tati was of Russian, Dutch, and Italian ancestry. His father, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff (1875-1957), was born in Paris, the son of Dmitry Tatishcheff (Дмитрий Татищев; also spelled Tatishchev), General of the Imperial Russian Army and military attaché to the Russian embassy in Paris. The Tatischeffs were a Russian noble family of patrilineal Rurikid descent. Whilst stationed in Paris, Dmitri Tatischeff married a French woman, Rose Anathalie Alinquant (Russian sources indicate that Alinquant was a circus performer and that the couple were never actually married).[4]
Dmitri Tatischeff died under suspicious circumstances from injuries sustained in a horse-riding accident, shortly after the birth of Georges-Emmanuel. As a child, Georges-Emmanuel experienced turbulent times, such as being forcibly removed from France and taken to live in Russia. In 1883, his mother brought him back to France, where they settled on the estate of Le Pecq, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on the outskirts of Paris.[5] In 1903, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff married the Dutch-Italian Marcelle Claire van Hoof (d. 1968). Together, they had two children, Natalie (b. 1905) and Jacques. Claire's Dutch father, a friend of van Gogh, whose clients included Toulouse-Lautrec,[6] was the owner of a prestigious picture-framing company near the Place Vendôme in Paris, and he brought Georges-Emmanuel into the family business. Subsequently, Georges-Emmanuel became the director of the company Cadres Van Hoof, and the Tatischeff family enjoyed a relatively high standard of living.[7]
Early life[edit]
Tati seems to have been an indifferent student, yet excelled in tennis and horse riding. He left school in 1923, at the age of 16, and his grandfather trained him as a picture framer in the family business. Between 1927 and 1928, he completed his national military service at Saint-Germain-en-Laye with the Cavalry's 16th Regiment of Dragoons.[8] On leaving the military, he took on an apprenticeship in London, where he was first introduced to rugby. Returning to Paris, he joined the semi-professional rugby team Racing Club de France, captained by Alfred Sauvy, and whose supporters included Tristan Bernard. It was there that he first discovered his comic talents, entertaining his teammates during intervals with impersonations of their sporting endeavours. He also first met Jacques Broido, with whom he became lifelong friends.[9]
The global economic crisis reached France in 1931–32.[10] Tati left both the Racing Club de France, and to his family's disapproval, his apprenticeship at Cadres Van Hoof. Giving up a relatively comfortable middle-class lifestyle to be a struggling performing artist during hard economic times, he developed a collection of highly physical mime routines that would become his Impressions Sportives (Sporting Impressions). Each year from 1931 to 1934, he participated in an amateur show organised by Alfred Sauvy.[11]