Jacques Tati (French: [tati]; born Jacques Tatischeff, pronounced [tatiʃɛf]; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, filmmaker, actor and screenwriter. He is best known for portraying the character Monsieur Hulot in his films Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967), and Trafic (1971).
Tati's first three films were made through the production company he co-founded with Fred Orain, Cady Films. Tati then created his own production company, Specta Films, while he was making Mon oncle. After the commercial failure of Playtime, Specta Films was placed into administration, and Tati later created a new production company, CEPEC. Film rights were later consolidated, and were taken over by a new company called Specta Films CEPEC, registered in 1978.
Jacques Tati was of Russian, Dutch, and Italian ancestry. His father, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff, was born in Paris, the son of Dmitry Tatischeff (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, Dmitry Tatischeff married a French woman, Rose Anathalie Alinquant. Russian journalist Inga Dombrovskaya indicates that Alinquant was a circus performer and that the couple were never actually married.
Dmitry 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; they settled on the estate of Le Pecq, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on the outskirts of Paris. In 1903, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff married the Dutch-Italian Marcelle Claire van Hoof (died 1968). Together, they had two children, Natalie (born 1905) and Jacques. Claire's Dutch father, a friend of Vincent van Gogh, was the owner of a prestigious picture-framing company near the Place Vendôme in Paris whose clients included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 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.
Jacques was born on 9 October 1907 in Le Pecq. He seems to have been an indifferent student, but excelled in tennis and horseback 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. 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.
The Great Depression reached France in 1931–32. 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.
Although he had likely played music hall engagements before, his act was first mentioned in 1935, when he performed at the gala for the newspaper Le Journal, celebrating the French victory in setting the transatlantic crossing record from Normandy. Among the honourable spectators was the influential writer Colette. Tati's act also caught the attention of Max Trebor, who offered him an engagement at the Theatre-Michel, where he quickly became the star act. After his success there, Tati tried to make it in London, playing a short season at the Finsbury Park Empire in March 1936. Upon his return to Paris in the same year, he was immediately hired as top billing at Mitty Goldin's ABC Théâtre, alongside the singer Marie Dubas, where he would work uninterrupted until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was for Tati's performances of his now-finely tuned Impressions Sportives at the ABC that the previously impressed Colette wrote,
"From now on no celebration, no artistic or acrobatic spectacle can do without this amazing performer, who has invented something quite his own ... His act is partly ballet and partly sport, partly satire and partly a charade. He has devised a way of being both the player, the ball and the tennis racquet, of being simultaneously the football and the goalkeeper, the boxer and his opponent, the bicycle and the cyclist. Without any props, he conjures up his accessories and his partners. He has suggestive powers of all great artists. How gratifying it was to see the audience's warm reaction! Tati's success says a lot about the sophistication of the allegedly "uncouth" public, about its taste for novelty and its appreciation of style. Jacques Tati, the horse and rider conjured, will show all of Paris the living image of that legendary creature, the centaur."
From 1937 to 1938, he performed at the Scala (Berlin) (former Berliner Eispalast) in Berlin.
During the 1930s, he began to experiment with film, acting in several shorts:
Oscar, champion de tennis (1932). Directed by Jack Forrester; written by and starring Jacques Tati (film lost).
On demande une brute (1934). Directed by Charles Barrois; featuring Jacques Tati as "Roger" and Enrico Sprocani as "le clown Rhum (Enrico)".
Gai dimanche (1935). Directed by Jacques Berr; written by and starring Jacques Tati, and featuring Enrico Sprocani.
Soigne ton gauche (1936). Directed by René Clément; starring Jacques Tati as "Roger", with Jacques Broido as "Sparring Partner", and Max Martel as "The Postman".
World War II and postwar employment
In September 1939, Tati was conscripted back into his 16th Regiment of Dragoons, which was then incorporated into the 3rd Division Legere de Cavalerie (DLC). He saw action in the Battle of Sedan in May 1940, when the German Army marched through the Ardennes into northern France. The 3rd DLC retreated from Meuse to Mussidan, in the Dordogne, where it was demobilised after the Armistice of 22 June 1940.
Returning to Paris, Tati resumed his civilian profession as a cabaret performer, finding employment by Léon Volterra at Le Lido, where he performed his Sporting Impressions from 1940 to 1942.
Considered as a possible substitute for Jean-Louis Barrault in Les Enfants du Paradis, Tati played the ghost in Sylvie and the Ghost, alongside Odette Joyeux as Sylvie, and also appeared as The Devil in the same film. Here, he met Fred Orain, studio director of St. Maurice and the Victorine in Nice.