Aula Noturna

In "Cours du Soir" a dim-witted acting instructor teaches acting to a class of equally dim-witted students. This might work well on paper, but the movie is awful. I don't know how Jacques Tati, a master of film and comedy.could have made it, acted in it, and had his name attached to it, unless a gun was held to his head for the entire project. Incidentally, the title has been mis-translated as "Evening Classes." It should be "Evening Class." The French word "cours" serves as both the singular and plural. It's clear only one class is being taught here.

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.

I don't know why this film is so underrated. For me, this film is special. This is not an ordinary one, even inside of the amazing world of Tati's films (there is no such a thing as an "ordinary film" when talking about Tati). If you take it seriously, not as a simple piece of comedy sketches, this is a short about Tati's obsession: observation. As a matter of fact, in this short, Tati's character makes his point about it: "this is a class about observation".Observation of details as in his whole work, is the clue to understand the film or, at least, make it enjoyable.

Despite the fact of not being directed by Jacques Tati, this is also a film about Tati's peculiar style, especially if we think about the black and white scene that reminds us of his first works: "School of Postmen" and "Jour de fête". The whole short is like the beginning of "School for postmen", when a postman is leading others in their training of mail delivering, but this time with a special and simple "reflection" (one might say): all those things that make Tati's films charming and funny are based on that little thing called observation.

Cours du soir is a sometimes funny Tati short, but it's own format harms it quite a bit. The film is of Tati teaching a night class how to mime as he does. It's not too funny watching Tati mime in front of a class. The tennis and horse riding bits are sort of lame. The postmen skit was done much better in the earlier short School for Postmen. The only really good thing in the film is his fisherman sketch. Otherwise, it's not too great. Nice to watch if you are a Tati fan. 6/10.

If you like Jacques Tati then see this but it´s nothing of his better works.I saw this on the Criterion Collection DVD Playtime.It includes some funny things, but the horse riding bit is not good.Still Tati has some good moments.So if you are a fan of Tati I recommend you to take a look at it. It´s hard to rate short films but if I must I would give this a 3+ out of 5.