Trafic (1971) User Reviews

A Piece of Cinema History

[davidholmesfr · 8/10 · 21 May 2002]

Whilst not Tati's best by any stretch of the imagination the genius of the man still shines through. Having lived in France for a while I see more humour in this film, particularly in the comedic observation, than before. The French may be fanatical about cinema and may well have produced some of the world's greatest film makers but out and out comedy probably ranks well down in terms of output. Maybe it's something to do with the French sense of humour (whatever that may be). Unlike British, and to a lesser extent US comedy, self-parody is not a French strength. It could be something to do with their history and education but the culture, so strong in literature and the arts seems not to demean itself with pure laughter. Most cinema fans would probably be hard put to list 10 French comedies - other than perhaps drama with the occasional comic undertones. Les Visiteurs (the original not the recent re-make) is probably one of the better examples but here again there's little or no self-mocking.

So it was left to Tati to mine the seam - and how well he mined it. Here he takes the smallest of French (dare I say Parisian) mannerisms and extends them into lengthy scenes of beautifully observed comedy. Whether it's the windscreen wipers in tune with the occupants or the nose-picking drivers, he asks the French to at least smile, if not laugh out loud, at themselves.

Yes, the film does move at rather a slow pace and there are times when the comic observation sags, but the sight of dear old M Hulot in his mackintosh, loping along with pipe jutting from his mouth will ever remain one of cinema's delights.

Leave your expectations behind and let this movie win you

[hensroad · 8/10 · 11 January 2003]

I didn't know what to expect when I went to see this movie many years ago. I was delightfully surprised. This is a very funny movie, but it is subtle in it's kookie-ness.

Two men have developed a new camping van and have set out to take it to an outdoors show. This should be an ordinary trip full of coffee, donuts and long boring stretches of road. But no, this does not take place in America; it starts in Paris and the goal is Amsterdam. Much can happen along such a route, and in this case, just about everything does.

Will they make it there before the show has ended? Will their dreams of being successful come to pass? These are the driving questions of this movie. They seem rather uninteresting goals, don't they? Nevertheless, these characters will likely win you over and have you rooting for them as they make their bumbling stab at entrepreneurship. Or, just as likely, you may find yourself enjoying every obstacle that steps in their way, as I did.

Much is unexpected in this movie and that's what makes it fun! Share this one with your friends and they will thank you.

Note: this is a comedy, there's not much gore or street fights, shoot-outs or bombs taking out city blocks, so be forewarned, this movie with not shake your subwoofer.

Although not a spy movie, it somewhat reminds me of the original "Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe": another wonderful French comedy.

Not great but often very funny

[dbborroughs · 7/10 · 2 September 2006]

Jacques Tati's final Hulot film concerns an attempt to get a camper car from Paris to the Amsterdam car show. Its Hulot on the road.

Made in the wake of the disastrous reception of Play Time this was Tati pretty much doing a contract work to get some money. The result is a less refined film than either of his previous two films, much of the film being less precise gags and set pieces, rather its the insanity of just getting from here to there. Filled with people this is possibly the most alive of the four Hulot films. There are what passes for close ups and we we see everyone as individuals and not merely as ants marching in sterile environments. Its a real world film something none of the preceding Hulot films really is.

For those who have seen the three previous films this is a film where details are filled in. Where Mon Oncle had Hulot looking for a new job, here we see the one that he finds, working in auto design. We also get to finally see his ever present umbrella opened. Most interesting is the fact that there is perhaps a hint of romance or if not real romance the sense that he is not an isolated human being. This is the film where the character finally comes to life as something more than a character.

For many people this is a lesser Tati film. It doesn't have the ideas of the previous two films. Outside of the camping car there is no real set piece to make your intellect marvel. The film is not a mediation of grand ideas, there are some, but when you get down to it its a comedy. A real laugh out loud comedy that is almost the exact opposite of Play Time where most of the humor brings smiles but not belly laughs.

I think its a very good film. Certainly its not his best, I would have to say that would be Hulot's Holiday since it mixes the intellectual humor with the belly laugh. This I would probably put as second simply because I genuinely laughed repeatedly at this film, something I didn't do with Mon Oncle and Play Time. I think a good argument could be made for the film being better than its reputation (The laughs, the sense of life and people, and even the lack of pretension). I will agree its not a great film, it does suffer from the meandering that Play Time and Oncle have, but it is a funny one.

If you like any of the earlier films see this movie. If you like funny comedies I also suggest you try this film. It may not go down as your favorite film but I'm pretty sure you will laugh at it, which is all I think it was ever designed to do.

The last we'll see of M. Hulot, and a melancholy farewell it is

[Terrell-4 · 7/10 · 17 September 2008]

What can we make of Trafic, Jacques Tati's last film? It certainly isn't a major success, as M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle are. It's not a gallant failure, as I believe Playtime is. It seems to me that it is a sad, sometimes amusing combination of those things that made Tati so unique, so funny, so problematic and so drawn to making mundane social commentary. There must be something in the water we drink or the bread we eat that causes some humans with extraordinary artistic gifts to believe that because they are great artists they also must have equally great gifts of social philosophy, gifts which they are determined to share with us.

By the time Tati made Trafic, four years after Playtime, he had lost ownership of his life's work, his films, and most of his money. Playtime was a debacle. He spent a fortune, his own as well as others, to craft a perfectionist's dream of artistic control. He ended up with a movie that was filled with surprises, layer on layer of -- for wont of a better term -- sight and sound gags, with fascinatingly complex amusements for an audience willing to let the situations develop around them, and seemingly endless, obvious and often impersonal visual commentary on the homogenizing of modern society and the perils of technology. Most moviegoers were not all that interested.

Now, with Trafic, Mr. Hulot has come back. He is a designer for a Paris auto company, and he has developed a camping vehicle like no other. Trafic is the story of Mr. Hulot's delivery of his camper from Paris to an international auto show in Amsterdam. It's a long journey filled with misunderstandings, accidents and crashes, a PR executive with an endless number of dress changes, cops, windshield wipers and a lot of cars. The movie is as exquisitely built as an expensive vest pocket timepiece. Unfortunately, time has a way of catching us up, and Mr. Hulot now is a man past middle age, where male innocence seems unlikely and somewhat unattractive. Tati was 64 now, and he looks it. The gentle, innocent mime who meets unexpected personal situations at a small seaside hotel or tries to help his young nephew has been replaced by a well-meaning older gentleman we more often observe than we root for. His encounters with the clichés of faceless technology and bumbling bureaucracy are increasingly with people with few understandable, sympathetic foibles. Mr. Hulot to be at his best needs people we can come to like and interact with, not simply interchangeable stand- ins...even if they're picking their noses in the privacy of their cars (in a sight gag probably only Tati could have pulled off).

Mr. Hulot only appeared in four feature-length movies. It is Tati's genius that in less than 500 minutes he gave us such a memorable and appealing human being. Tati's layering of sight gags is unique and often intensely and unexpectedly funny. With Trafic, however, I found my interest more intellectual than anything else. There were stretches of the film that simply weren't all that engaging. And this, of course, is all just opinion.

Almost as good as Tati's best films; very underrated!

[zetes · 9/10 · 31 July 2002]

Tati's final theatrical film, which is often considered his greatest failure, is in actuality nearly as good as his masterpieces. In this film, Tati stars for the fourth and final time as M. Hulot. This time he has a job as an automobile designer, and it is his job to get his company's new Camping Car to Amsterdam for a big auto show. Accompanying him is a driver, François, and a public relations worker, Maria (played marvelously by Maria Kimberly, who reminds us of the great lead actress roles played by Nathalie Pascaud and Barbara Denneck in M. Hulot's Holiday and Playtime respectively). Maria drives around in a little yellow convertible with her little fur-ball dog. Its fast and maneuverable. It can go pretty much anywhere it wants. Unfortunately, François and M. Hulot are driving a large truck. They often get into trouble when they're trying to follow Maria's car. Every problem that can happen does. Many observations are made about how people act when they're in their cars on the highway (it's a non-stop traffic jam from Paris to Amsterdam). The jokes in Traffic are always hilarious. The first fifteen or twenty minutes are somewhat dry of them, which is mainly why I don't rank this one up there with M. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Playtime (it's about even with Jour de fête). But when it gets going, it never stops. And it's beautiful, too, just as all of his other films. The final sequence is sublime, and the final shot will stay with me forever. 9/10.

Very French, and frustrating to watch on a TV

[edwartell · 2 July 2000]

Jacques Tati's final film shows his frustrations with modern progress, and car congestion in particular. Suffice it to say that on a trip from Paris to Amsterdam every possible problem a car could encounter short of absolute destruction is suffered by poor Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) and his traveling group. The humor and pacing of the film is very French; that is, a bit slow to American sensibilities. Regardless, the film is oddly compelling even when nothing more than a traffic jam is seen. The gags are sometimes hilarious. Watching this English-dubbed video on a TV is a frustrating experience, since one suspects that it would be much more interesting on the big screen (because of the somewhat monotonous nature of the images), which is not an option. A worthwhile watch, but definitely not TV-friendly. Not Tati's most accessible film.

Enjoyable enough.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 6/10 · 26 September 2010]

This is certainly not an unpleasant movie to watch but for a comedy it's just too much lacking in its fundamental required ingredients.

Jacques Tati movies are all always being very subtle. Too subtle for my taste. It really takes its time to set up its comical moments, that often fall flat. There is just not an awful lot happening in this movie and comical-wise its surely lacking. Luckily the movie still has a pleasant, fun sort of atmosphere, which still made me enjoy watching this movie. And Tati movies are often movies you just have to watch, rather than paying too much attention for any of its story or acting in it.

This movie was initially intended to be made with the collaboration of Dutch Oscar winner Bert Haanstra. I had never realized this before but Tati and Haanstra were actually two film-makers that were very much alike with their style and approach of film-making, with a big difference that I like Haanstra way better than Tati. Both are being subtle and observant with their movies but Tati movies often feature slapstick humor, while Haanstra movies are more comical in its subtle observance's of real human behavior and its nature. He was also a director that got best known and got most critical acclaim for his documentaries. So while Tati movies are all being forced and staged, Haanstra movies are more realistic with its approach and therefore its subtlety also works out better. You can definitely tell which sequences in this movie got done by Bert Haanstra but you obviously have to be familiar with his work to recognize it. Appereantly he and Jacques Tati did not get along very well, or they had some creative differences so Haanstra left the project before it finished.

It's the last movie to feature the Monsieur Hulot character, from Tati. A comedy slapstick character that got portrayed by Jaceques Tati himself, in a handful of movies, over the decades. I never was too impressed with the character but he still had his biggest successes with it and his movie "Mon oncle" even won an Oscar for best foreign picture, while Tati himself also got nominated once, for his writing on the other Monsieur Hulot movie, "Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot". The character however never really plays the main part in his movies and they focus more on the events and surroundings around him, while often being a social commentary as well.

You can definitely call this movie the least original Monsieur Hulot movie, in terms of its creativity. Guess that Tati really ran out of good ideas and had sort of lost his touch, also after taking some financial blows with his previous movies. You can often see the comical moments in this movie coming from miles away and when they hit, they certainly don't hit as strong and funny as you would hope and perhaps also would expect.

Certainly not an unpleasant movie to watch and Tati's subtlety isn't as annoying as is the case with some of his other movies but for a comedy it's still surely lacking in some good strong humor.

6/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

One of the great comedies!

[lapratho · 10/10 · 25 August 2004]

Unlike the previous reviewer, I have to say that the French made many great comedies. But just as there are many styles in US cinema, so are there many styles in other countries.

"Trafic" is a wonderful stab at modern life and our infatuation with cars that is more up to date than ever, with traffic jams at an all time high.

In passing, or rather sitting, through the summery vacation road chaos, this Tati movie slaps everything from drivers' behaviours and quirks that are borderless, to general human characteristics, and even matters of national pride.

I disagree with the inability of the French to laugh at themselves - but one needs to realise that the humour involved is very deep and tongue in cheek, but is just about even more stinging because it is not so superficial.

What makes this movie, just like the other Tati movies, so remarkable, is that one does not need to speak or understand French and can still watch it in its original sound track, because the camera does all the work. "Shtick" with brains, a piece of visual art that might hang in a modern art gallery, were it not a movie, self contained, intelligent, funny. It is a neat feature about most Tati films.

I remember being in stitches when I last saw it, and that was after seeing it several times already.

Other great French comedies would be the original versions of

"The Tall Blonde With The Red (Black) Shoe", ie "Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire"

(note that the original odd shoe was black, not red),

"Birdcage", ie "La Cage Aux Folles", the German title of which was much closer to the actual "A Cage Of Fools" .... oh heck, just look up movies with Pierre Richard, Jean Rochefort, the unknown to Americans (because he would have put Hollywood to such shame to kill their business in comedy) all time unforgettable Louis De Funes, Fernandel, Mireille Darc, Yves Montand, Jean Paul Belmondo (one of his movies is an obvious blueprint for Indiana Jones), .... these are all true actors that are also capable of character studies and can deliver such a punch that it flies right over many people's heads .... maybe the previous reviewer is right ... the French have no comedy ... not of the shallow sitcom style in any case. If you can laugh with your whole heart, head , and soul though, then start digging and you will find much of the best ever made.

Slowing Down

[davidmvining · 7/10 · 27 May 2022]

There ends up a lot to enjoy in Jacques Tati's final theatrically released feature film, but I think it's obvious that Tati was best when he was given total control of everything, gobs of money, and an unusual amount of time to craft the comedy. Out in the wilds, given the road trip format of the film's story, the comedic stylings never reach the delirious highs of any of his previous three films, but his talent was too strong, his ideas too clear, and his heart too warm for the film overall to descend into something less than worthwhile.

M. Hulot (Tati) works for a small car manufacturer as a designer, and they are putting the final touches on their camping car for a large car expo in Amsterdam. What follows is a misadventure as everything goes wrong on the journey from the truck they're using to transport the car breaking down multiple times to being held up at the border with the Netherlands to needing to get the car slightly fixed after an accident. It's a leisurely paced film with an episodic structure, moreso obviously than any of Tati's films since Jour du Fete. What knits it all together is, like all the rest, Tati's sense of comedy.

Each episode was either filmed on a closed set or at a location, and, without fail, the sequences filmed on sets are funnier than those filmed on locations. I have a theory that Tati was allowed more time to figure out comedic bits in sets than on location, so he was able to find more funny things to happen, like the dance of workers in the garage at the beginning as they take each other's equipment leading to one working pulling out a series of drawers and walking up them to account for his missing ladder. That's funny. The scene where Tati has to run across a field and get gas from a small town's gas station is less so, the comedic bits limited to pretty much Tati running back and forth from where he left his gas can when he gets a ride back to the broken down truck.

This dichotomy between the higher quality gags on sets and the lower quality gags on location continues for a while, much more heavily weighted towards the location stuff. One piece that pops up from time to time that feels like a highly topical and hard to translate joke is a gas station that gives out artistic busts of famous men to each customer. I think it's supposed to be a comment on the faux-culture you find at gas stations in Europe, but it's a bit lost on me. There are good bits with the heads (like a customs officer looking into the back of the truck and finding a stone head looking up at him), but the actual meaning of the bit is something I don't really understand.

The film as a whole ends up feeling kind of random, matching the episodic nature of the film's storytelling structure, until Tati and his compatriots have to stop in a small town in the Netherlands to fix the camping car's fender. It takes them more than a day to get it fixed, and it's here that the overall point of the film begins to become clear. Throughout the film, we've seen the Apollo 11 mission on televisions in the foregrounds and backgrounds of shots. We've also been passing through beautiful country. We've seen Tati and his fellow passengers dismiss all of it because the speed of the road kept them from it. Stranded on a riverside, waiting for the English speaking mechanic to get around to fixing their car, they have to take the time to take in what's going on around them. They can appreciate the look of the river, waving to the mechanic's neighbors while they eat a meal with him. They can actually watch Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon and then mimic it out of admiration. They've been given a chance to slow down and take in the wonders of the world.

Given Tati's previous two films, it would be a safe assumption that Tati's view of the wonders of the world tended to be older, like ancient rivers or well-lived in houses. However, the inclusion of the Apollo moon mission expands that. Tati wasn't a luddite completely. He admired the advancement of human technology, but he also seemed to think that giving into it completely was taking something away from the human experience. In PlayTime, it seemed to alienate people from each other. In Trafic, it seems to alienate people from the beautiful things, both natural and manmade, both old and new. Take time to see the world around you.

And the literal subject of the film, a race across several European nations to get to a car expo, is the perfect vehicle to attach this idea to. The story reinforces the point rather nicely that way.

It's just unfortunate that much of the comedic stylings in the early parts of the film are just not that funny. They're often nice and slightly amusing, but not much more than that. I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's dead space because Tati fills the screen with motion as much as he can, but it just doesn't have the punch as something like the first half of PlayTime had.

I think it should also be noted that I think this is a thin metaphor for Tati's own mental space as well. This is the first Hulot film where Hulot has a job, and it's a designer of a new, fancy, and incredibly dense camping car that can do so much more than the outside look at it seems to indicate (there's a fun scene where Tati gets to show off all of the features to border patrol police officers that surely inspired half of Wes Anderson's entire imagination). They get to the expo, and it's too late, it's closed. Hulot's creation is a financial flop because they never even got to show it off, and yet, Hulot is unbowed. He's proud of his creation whether it was a financial success or not. If that's not Tati reflecting back on the artistic merit and commercial failure of PlayTime, I don't know what is.

It's not his best work, but like everything else it has intelligence, a sweet hidden message, and plenty of laughs. Trafic is a nice farewell to the cinema from a master of comedic cinematic storytelling.

My brief review of the film

[sol- · 8/10 · 21 January 2006]

It takes about half an hour for this film to warm up, but once it gets going, it is a great watch. As the fourth entry in Tati's M. Hulot series, the film is not quite as good as the two previous entries, 'PlayTime' and 'Mon Oncle', but it is still a fine film on its own, with not only amusing puns but also interesting satirical elements once again. Like with the previous two films, 'Trafic''s jokes owe a lot to the way in which the shots are set up, and in general Tati does a fine job visualising the material. Some shots appear to lack meaning or thematic motivation, but in general they help to flesh out the humour at technology. It is also interesting how there is a distinct lack of close-ups until the end. Everything going on is so interesting that one wants to look closer, but Tati places the viewer at a distance. The jokes are often funnier because we cannot see the finer details, and this is perhaps Tati saying something in the way of that if we distance ourselves we can see humour that we might miss otherwise if we try to examine everything too closely. As usual, the music used is excellent too, fitting in well with the on-screen action. Overall, the film does not work quite as well as 'PlayTime' and 'Mon Oncle', but there is little reason to regard it as an inferior entry - just a lesser entry, perhaps.

Minor Hulot

[Quinoa1984 · 6/10 · 14 November 2023]

This really is not unpleasant, and I smiled a good deal (when I wasnt bored); but an hour in I knew I wouldn't watch this again after this viewing most likely, which is not the case with Tati's other Hulot films that are pretty masterful on the whole (think like, say, going from A Night at the Opera to Room Service with the Marx brothers and you may catch my drift).

Tati is so into having little bits of business that the movie often forgets to have... gags. Or, that is not always fair, perhaps it thinks the little bits of behavior are enough to sustain it, but without things like relatable characters it feels aloof. And while the whole overall irony is that they actually don't get to the auto show in Amsterdam due to the mishaps and ballyhoo, I suspect there would have been some rich chances for more satisfying plants and payoffs, or quick visuals (Hulot in the half-car is a hoot), than what we get with the misadventures and long stays at the office (to show how the camping car works) and at the farmhouse.

The multi-car nose picking (but not one booger eaten, come on, France), the multi-car melee (especially that one car's hood flapping away) and Hulot getting stuck up in the tree upside down trying his damndest to fix the outside hedge fixture on the house are the highlights and are funny. And there are little bits of grace notes that made me laugh a bit, like when Hulot steps into the guys office, turns around and knocks, the man at the desk says to come in, then he leaves and talks to the man at the other desk he just passed (!) Or the moment where that one barking dog in the countryside house is just a big softee.

Dare I say, as admirable as the effort is, Tati (on a post Playtime high) is a little too satisfied with his own flights of fancy. I think the problem too is not that a filmmaker is engaged more with behavior than story or plot - what would cinema be without Altman or Cassavetes if that was the case - but the larger context and people in it need to matter for that behavior to take shape, and this features... a slightly bumbling but not more or less than usual Hulot, and that one American woman (director of ALTRA, she doesn't even have a name), who seems stuffy and not that sympathetic for much of the time. I know, I know: tragedy in close up and comedy in long shot and so on, but there are limits.

Ok, one more nice part: The images of the cars driving fast and the chaos of the last ten minutes set to Charles Dumont's burst of rock and roll.

Hugely underrated and quite essential

[MOscarbradley · 9/10 · 13 June 2015]

Jacques Tati's "Trafic" is an almost plot less series of visual gags, all of them inspired and the best of them among the finest in Tati's oeuvre, yet the film was not a critical success and remains hugely underrated. This time Hulot is taking a 'camping car' from Belgium to the Amsterdam Motor Show and naturally causes havoc wherever he goes, (the film has the most beautifully choreographed and balletic car-crash in the movies).

Tati was, of course, the greatest visual comic since Chaplin and Keaton but unlike the great silent comics he had the virtue of sound at his fingertips and perhaps no director used sound effects with the same degree of brilliance that Tati does here. Dialogue, while not necessarily kept to a minimum, is again mostly redundant. But then words were never what Tati was about; you can watch his films without the benefit of subtitles and still understand them. This may not be in the same class as "Les Vacances De M Hulot" but it's essential nevertheless.

Great for Tati fans

[gerritschroder · 7/10 · 16 February 2002]

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.

The Conventional Hulot

[Sqoon · 5/10 · 22 June 2003]

Jacques Tati attempts to drastically transform his alter ego for the final installment of the Hulot series, and naturally you can't blame him (one being that this comes after the financial disaster of Playtime, but especially because of the fact that he has added dimensions to Hulot in every film) but in most respects, Traffic is considerably stunted. It's still quite good, but a serious disappointment after Holiday, Oncle, and Playtime, which after ascending in genius and brilliance, there would be no place to go but down.

Traffic has the most conventional plot of the entire series - there's a set goal (getting the Altra car to the convention) - but rather than making the film more accessible, it only makes it more alien. All the Hulot films are blithely and happily adrift, propelled only by its jokes and reoccurring characters, but in the case of having a clear goal in mind, the deliberate slow pacing begins to weigh the film down. Because we are anticipating their arrival at the car show, throughout the movie we wonder what's in store and the build-up creates impatience, rather than the usual relaxation. If Tati was going for accessibility and conventionality, why didn't he employ a faster, three-act structure?

It's unfortunate to see gone the Hulot of old who was content on just walking around for days; in Trafic he's constantly running around doing busy work (he's on screen for nearly half the movie but actually doesn't do much of anything noteworthy). Like in the other films, he never knows what to do with himself and the world doesn't know what to do with him, but in Trafic, the problem is that this is a world Hulot created: he designed the Altra and it is he who wants to get it to the car show. He is imposing himself on the world, rather than the world that is crashing down on him and him fighting back, so the gags and observations aren't as pure or natural.

The stops the mini-caravan makes and the exploration of new roadside towns are perfect opportunities to bring back the old Hulot, but Tati seems almost afraid to let the world come to Hulot on their own terms. Scenes like two kids playing a beautiful tune on an acoustic by a lake or Hulot arriving at a convenience store feel like set-ups for great scenes which were left on the editing room floor.

I still really enjoyed the movie (there are some inspired visuals and Hulot is Hulot; it's always great to see him on the screen) but these were specific negative points I thought were worth bringing up.

6/10

On average... average.

[shoobe01-1 · 7/10 · 22 October 2019]

Brilliant in parts, it is not of one mind and on average is just average.

The brilliant bits are when it's absurd, and nearly silent, almost purely theme instead of story.

Especially as the movie progresses, it gets more (badly written) dialog, more pedestrian photography and editing, and switches from absurd to just dumb.

The PR girl is also insufferable. Not just as a character, but an actor. Small town community theater bad.

My favorite Tati, def underrated

[alansabljakovic-39044 · 8/10 · 13 June 2020]

Another visually stunning movie from Tati but this time I really liked the story and the gags. The police checking the camper's equipment is pure kino.

Kind of Disappointing

[masercot · 7/10 · 16 March 2019]

I've been waiting decades to see this movie, having seen the first three Hulot films and his Max Sennett-like mailman short. But, the Hulot character was different... less and explorer and more a background character.

But, the movie stayed with me for a while after I watched it. It occurred to me that the characters became less and less anxious about their destination as the movie progressed; and, as they did, they enjoyed where they were at a lot more.

There were some Tati visuals. Hulot walking with a gas can in one direction espying someone across the highway with a gas can walking in the other direction. The dance of the trunks and hoods of the cars in the show. The advance men stepping gingerly over lengths of string in a giant empty auditorium. And, the scene with the practical joke about the dog was hilarious.

It is definitely a movie worth seeing. Like pizza, when Jacques Tati movie isn't the best, it is still pretty good.

Long-winded but entertaining

[IndustriousAngel · 8/10 · 9 September 2013]

This is a slow comedy - the best way to enjoy it is to invite some friends over, put some nice wine or beer plus something to eat on the table and let the "story" unfold on a big screen (Tati's compositions are worth the big screen, even if the film stock is of low quality). Some of the scenes resemble car ballets! "Trafic" satirizes man and his obsession with fetish #1, the car, but it does so in a very nice way, not condemning or condescending, more like a nature documentary showing the behaviour of some strange species. The comedy is very close to Buster Keaton's, at its center technological gadgets, slapstick and social interactions slipping into the absurd. My favourite scene might be the one where some mechanics are repairing the car while watching a live broadcast from the moon (yep, the movie is that old) and begin imitating the low-gravity motions of the astronauts. It's rarely laugh-out loud but it's always inducing smiles! Highly recommended if your attention span is up to it.

A warm childhood memory

[Poul · 7/10 · 19 June 2001]

With Traffic coming out I started thinking about one of the earliest films I remember from my childhood. Trafic must have a very significant impression on me as I vividly recall the frustration rendered by it. Sitting there as a child almost jumping out of the chair in plain irritation of the quirks of Tati.

Last but not least

[ilpohirvonen · 8/10 · 3 September 2010]

Trafic certainly isn't the last film by Jacques Tati, but it sure is the last successful and well known one. Mostly because it is his last film with his standard character, Monsier Hulot. After Trafic Tati still directed the television Sweden-France co production Parade (1974) and started making the sports-documentary Forza Bastia, which his daughter, Sophie Tatischeff edited and finished in 2002. But I personally like to see Trafic as his last film, as his cinematic legacy.

The plot of Trafic is very simple; Mr. Hulot, car driver and the PR girl have to take a new car to an exhibition in Amsterdam. They arrive few days late - the only actual exhibition is at the customs. The world of Jacques Tati is full of gags, he doesn't spend much time with his stories, but he writes his gags for years. And the pleasantly surprising thing is how the gags are made - they aren't taken too far, as they often are in comedies of today. Dozens of events happen at the same time, dozens of people get in these and by coincidence they come across with each other.

The destruction of old core values and habitat have been common themes for Jacques Tati. But in Play Time (1967) and Trafic (1971) he goes far deeper in the mechanization of life. Play Time showed us the futuristic Paris cursed by globalization. It would be too superficial to see Play Time simply just as a satire of urban living and modern society. In Trafic we see that Tati doesn't build that big a difference between urban and rural living. People come across with same kind of situations, troubles and madness. I think Play Time is his highest achievement and it's so much more than just a satire about modern society. In Play Time's postmodern Paris and in Trafic's highway the individual finds the very same challenges.

Trafic is basically a satire about mass industry - cars are built and built so long until the consumers are satisfied, which will never happen. This is the age people live their lives with avarice. Just as Mon oncle so is Trafic about consumer hysteria - the customs scene is a great example of this. The mechanization of life is the main theme in Play Time and in Trafic - in Trafic, once again, the customs scene is the greatest example of this, but it can be seen in just about every scene. For instance the randomness of relationships, which is a reflection of the twisted relation between work and the mechanization of life.

Light Visual Car-Based Amusements

[iquine · 7/10 · 20 March 2018]

(Flash Review)

Another visually clever film by Tati. While not as ingenious as his more notable films, this offers a few pleasant gags here and there. The protagonist Mr. Hulot is tasked with delivering a concept car; a camper transforming vehicle to an auto show. During the road trip, everything that can go wrong that you can think of goes wrong: flat tire, out of gas, etc. There are some French cultural gags as well as jokes about everyday people and what they do while alone in their cars such as picking noses and eating odd foods. Overall, there are a mixture of visually funny moments and physical comedy. Some scenes lose focus and are less funny and are drug out too long. Not as good as Mon Oncle or Playtime.

Plenty of jokes, if you're paying attention

[Anonymous-733 · 9/10 · 23 November 2014]

So far, this is the only Jacques Tati movie I've seen. It's extremely visual. It looks great. In particular, the opening of the film and the movie's final major act are wonderful to watch. A few scenes show characters being swallowed up in massive sets and environments. The shot gets wider and wider, an approximation of how insignificant each of the characters are to those around them. Such shots are stunning in their beauty.

Most of the comedy in Trafic is visual as well. I normally like wordplay, but I ended up liking Trafic's visual humor as well. For example, two workers are installing a sign for an "auto show", and one instructs the other to rotate the giant letter "O" before putting it up. Yet the O is perfectly round and looks the same at any rotation. Most of the comedy is from similar workplace incompetence and inefficiency. Much like a real workplace, there's nobody in the movie pointing out how ridiculous everyone is acting. The satire isn't mean-spirited; Tati isn't implying that workers are lazy or stupid, just that sometimes we end up behaving foolishly.

A scene in the middle reminds me of Saturday Night Live, during its creative peak. Customs inspectors are suspicious of a prototype camper car, so its salespeople have to explain all of its features. This includes an electric razor inside the steering wheel, an extendable bed, a trunk-mounted shower, and a grill that seems to use heat from the engine. It's absurd and brilliant, and I've only listed some of the car's features. The inspectors aren't always convinced: hands having been squirted by the built-in soap dispenser, an official requests to have the soap analyzed. Anyone who has seen Charlie Chaplin's movies will see shades of his characters in Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot -- he changes a tire with extremely exaggerated, rhythmic alternation between crouching and standing.

All of the humor, both visual and spoken, translates excellently from French (and there is some English in the movie anyway), although one joke about a gas station giving out trinkets will only be fully appreciated by audiences who were alive when gas stations still did this (before the 1970s?). I think it compares very easily to "Airplane!" or The Naked Gun. In contrast to The Naked Gun, Trafic is more deathly serious despite being hilarious. Part of the comedy is playing "what's wrong with this picture?", and sometimes it's really hard! If you miss the jokes, or have to have them explained, you won't find the movie as funny.

96 minutes long is the perfect length for this movie. It conveys the annoyance of waiting for a roadside mechanic or being late for an event, without forcing viewers to watch in real-time. There are plenty of jokes throughout the film to keep the audience's attention. Despite being called "Trafic", you're not going to see any metropolitan gridlock here. The movie happens *because* of some cars, but most of the movie is not *in* a car.

Full disclosure: I watched this along with around 15 other young people in a film comedy class. I liked it far more than any of the other students, who found it to be either: occasionally smart but mostly boring, or entirely boring.

A French Road movie from the 70s

[The-Sarkologist · 4/10 · 25 December 2013]

Trafic is about an auto-developer who makes the ultimate campervan and is taking it to an car show in Ansterdam. His promotions girl is going with him in a sports car, and she seems to be a very reckless individual, at one stage causing a huge motor accident. The inventor travels with the van, which has been stored in the back of a truck.

Trafic is essentially a road movie, and is quite predictable as well. It is obvious from the beginning that they were not going to make the motor show - it just seemed to be that way. Also, parts of the film were confusing, especially the scene after the huge motor accident - I was not sure who was doing what and what was happening. The characters seemed to always be at a distance, and as such we never got to meet them. They were preoccupied with their own problems and seemed to shield themselves from the viewers. As such it was more like watching a group of people that we do not know going about their day to day lives, and at the end of the movie, we still don't feel that we know them.

Still the humour is reasonable. This movie is not what can be termed as a "barrel of laughs", but it does have its moments at times. I guess it is a reasonable movie, and the fact that it is French gives it its extra marks.

The influence of Bert Haanstra still present despite his withdrawal

[frankde-jong · 8/10 · 25 July 2021]

After the commercial failure (but the artistic success) of "Playtime" (1967), Jacques Tati urgently needed a commercial success. He got it with "Trafic" (1971). The film was a success at the box office, but is artisticly probably the weakest Tati film (that is to say, still rather good).

"Trafic" was originally planned as a Jacques Tati and Bert Haanstra co-production. Allthough Bert Haanstra ("Everyone", 1963) eventually withdrew, his influence is still noticeable in the final film.

"Trafic" has a more documentary character than for example "Playtime". The plot is minimal (Hulot and his team do not succeed in getting a revolutionary camper from Paris to a car exhibition in Amsterdam in time) and the visual gags seem more observend than thought out. There are for example sequences with drivers yawning or nose picking in their cars. This sequences can be seen as a sort of "Everyone in their cars" and the influence of Haanstra is tangible.

Of course there are also sequences and themes that are definitely thought out and that are without any doubt attributable to Tati. After all it was not without reason that it took 4 years to make "Trafic". I would like to call attentiont to the following scenes and themes.

The scene in which a pile-up is transformed into a real choreography for cars. This choreography is extended to a choreography for humans when the drivers get out and start doing stretches.

During the film the team of Mr Hulot regularly visit garages where one is watching the landing on the moon (Apollo 11, 1969). The message is clear. We can bring a man to the moon but we cannot bring a car from Paris to Amsterdam.

The same garages often also have a junkyard. Again the message is clear. Mr Hulot is on his way to an exhibition for fancy new cars but eventually they all end up as carbage of the consumption society.

It is worthwhile to think about the role Tati's alterego of Mr Hulot plays in the different Tati films. In "Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot" (1953), Hulot himself causes the chaos. In "Playtime" (1967), Hulot observes tha chaos caused by modernity. "Mon oncle" (1958) is somewhere in between. In "Trafic" (1971) Hulot has become part of modernity himself. After all he is the designer of the camper to be shown at the exibition.

That Hulot in "Trafic" has joined modernity does not mean that he is once again the main source of chaos. In "Trafic" that role is fulfilled by the PR officer Maria (Maria Kimberly) who, by doing everything very resolutely, is not enhancing efficieny. On the contrary. During the movie she thawed and becomes more and more relaxed.

Tati shines as always

[martinpersson97 · 10/10 · 16 May 2023]

Jacques Tati is without a doubt one of the best directors of all time, and one who finds a perfect, very characteristic and unique touch in his blend of drama and comedy.

This film is definitely one of his best, which is no faint praise givwn his impressive filmography.

The script is, as always, incredible. The actors all do an incredible job, and the cinematography is great, feels very much Tati. And the cutting and editing is of course incredible as always.

Overall, a masterpiece in every sense of the word, as one would expect and what could be said of most of Tati's filmography. Definitely recommended!