gerritschroder

Really only for Tati fans. A sentimental journey for Hulot, his send-off. The scene in which the mechanic and Hulot mime the moonwalk, playing behind them on tv, sums it all up -- and is the only time one of Tati's explicit mime performances is really good.

Re-watchable.

Tati made this film during the course of filming Playtime. This must have been the price he paid the devil for the miracle he performed in the longer movie. Here, he teaches a wordless course in mime for an audience of attentive note-takers. I became catatonic early on in this eternal twenty minutes of torture (really, I haven't been this far in Hell since I took 4 grams of mushrooms in 78). Tati is a fisherman, a horseback rider, a tennis player, etc., observing every boring nuance that would make anyone wonder why a kind human being would want to perform such quotidian behavior before a still-living audience.

Even worse than Parade.

Tati's one of my top three directors. Don't watch this.

More than any other movie I've seen, this one draws a dark picture of what the statistical enormity and bureaucratic obscenity of WWII did to individuals during (and after) the Second World War. This is a love story set against the new way of dealing with the logistics of millions of people on the move in wartime Europe -- on either side. The big point is that it's difficult to draw a line between the sides in the brutal impersonality of the events that crush people like the characters in this story.

Kirk Douglas is great, of course, and the direction in the film is always intersting. Hard to believe this was made as late as 53.

See this if you can -- I saw it on TCM recently in a Kirk Douglas festival. For that matter, watch all the Kirk Douglas flicks you can -- the guy had either great taste or great luck.