Parade

Jacques Tati's swansong is an affectionate return to roots, recreating some of the vaudeville routines of his past on stage at a Swedish circus, in a short program originally made for Scandinavian TV. Tati himself, serving as ringmaster for the troupe of acrobats and clowns, puts his aging but still limber body on display during a transitional set of solo pantomime turns. The show is frequently hilarious (some of the audience interaction with the performers is clearly not unscripted), but as a farewell effort of a comic genius responsible for some of the biggest laughs since the glory days of silent film comedy it can certainly come as an anti-climax. And because the stage show was 'filmed' using a crude early video process, it almost resembles a bootleg live rehearsal for the next, never made Tati feature.

It felt slight the first time around, but, wow, this really is a great film. It now reminds me of two other television productions from great European directors around the same time period, Fellini's Clowns and Bergman's The Magic Flute. Many people love those films, both very mediocre in their respective directors' canons, but there seems to be little love for Parade. It is deliberately low-key, but I found a lot in it this second time. At first glance, it doesn't seem to be much more than a filmed circus performance. But there's more. We don't only see the performances, although they probably take up most of the screen time. We also see the performers backstage. We see how much they love to do this. Even during the intermission, when no member of the audience can see him, Tati performs one of his mime acts for his fellow performers. And, something I didn't pay much attention to the first time, these performers, when they're backstage - and sometimes when they're on the stage - are constantly painting, painting pictures, the sets, all kinds of things. Not only is this film about the love of performance, but the love of artistic creation. And not only is it about that, but it's also about the audience's joy of watching the performers, and, sometimes, their joy of interacting with the performers onstage. Parade buzzes with a sense of Andre Bazin's famed moment. There's so much beauty to be found. And then there's that gorgeous ending, with the little boy and girl re-enacting the circus performers as they break down their sets and disappear. What a magical image Tati has left us, his final of the cinema. I love him more than, I believe, any other director. He touches me deeply in my heart.

Tati was really going for something here, but I'm not quite sure what. He's being so subtle here that I couldn't really tell what his point was.

The film is all about a circus, with performances by clowns, magicians, acrobats, jugglers, a band, and Jacques Tati. The different scenes vary in worth - the jugglers are awesome, but there's one sequence, where people try to jump on a pony and a donkey, that's very cruel to animals (although it ends wonderfully). One of the bigger disappointments of the film are Jacques Tati's mimes. Not that they're bad, but Tati fans have already seen them all. He impersonates a football player, a boxer, a tennis player, a fisherman, and an equestrian. This is how he first got famous in the 30s and 40s, by impersonating sportsmen, but at 70 something, his miming isn't as great anymore. And we've seen them all the way back to Watch Your Left and up to The Night Course.

The action isn't just of the circus performers. Tati also goes behind the scenes of the circus and especially to the audience. A lot of the film, in fact, observes the audience. We get to know several of them as characters.

The ending is quite great. It has the same bittersweet tone that all of Tati's endings have. I actually teared up a little, but that was mostly because I knew that this was the last time "Une film de Jacques Tati" would ever appear on screen. I didn't love Parade, but I certainly liked it. 7/10.

This is a collection of circus acts with a fair bit of Tati's miming thrown in for good measure.

It's not a BAD film. Some memorable sequences include Tati miming a tennis game (in slow motion!) and a collection of traffic cops around the world. I don't think the M. Hulot character really let Tati really stretch out and MIME. He is a fantastic performer and certainly as good as Marcel Marceau.

The other performers and comedians, while not as famous as Tati, are still pretty good and cannot be said to let the film down at all.

The main problem is that the premise is so basic. You can't really GO very far with this and Tati doesn't. It's basically just like watching a circus on TV. There's nothing to really glue the whole picture together.

I agree with the reviewer that found the audiences 70's clothing interesting in itself.

Tati's last film -- done as a TV Special in Sweden -- is a circus show. Tati appears as the master of ceremonies and does three or four of his skits. There is a brass band. There are acrobats and jugglers and Pia Colombo sings the theme song towards the end. She sings it like she's Piaf singing "Je Ne Regrette Rien". It's a pleasant show.

Like I said, it's Tati's last movie (although I am sure he hoped otherwise), done after PLAYTIME and TRAFFIC had been bankrupting flops. So did Tati make this, thinking he'd do some of his old routines, make a few kronas and see if he could get back to his real projects? It's a tempting idea, and one could hardly blame Tati. He is adored by many, disliked by a few. I think he was a serious artist who used his clowning to comment on a deep dissatisfaction with the modern world, and his self-aware disdain for speed and technology and the latest fad were at the heart of his movies. And because of his artistic certainty and lack of anyone to tell him no, he had forgotten that film is a commercial art, and you can never forget the audience you are making it for.... its size, as well as its empathy.

Notice the painted audience members on the sets. Notice the shots of the audience, as they enter, as they observe, as they enter the ring for one or two events, and as they leave. I think Tati was telling himself, if not his audience, that he had to be more careful in the future, remember who he was making his movies for. It's a shame he never got another chance.