Word: tati
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...life and art without forsaking the great tradition of the comedy genre. He knows how creatively to employ the new modes discovered by other directors involved in different genres. He flows with the current of contemporary cinematic trends, utilizing all the resources of modern technology. In contrast to Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix who explore the present potential of silent comedy gags, Allen blazes the trail for a renaissance of sound film comedy. He is rapidly approaching the point when-it is my hope-we will be able to say that Allen is the Chaplin of our time...
...Tati's Playtime...
...enthusiasm that has greeted these latest adventures of Mr. Hulot appears to be the product of critical wistfulness. Tati is the last in a once great tradition of pantomimic screen comedians. Out of a desire to keep that tradition alive, writers seize on the odd, amusing bits in his films, overpraising them while ignoring Tati-Hulot's glaring inadequacies...
These are promising enough settings for comedy, but Tati never develops any dramatic tension within them, partly because he seems to have no firm attitude toward them. Modernism was an actively malevolent force in Chaplin's Modern Times; Tati sees it as nothing more than a minor nuisance. His greatest problem, however, is that unlike Chaplin-or Buster Keaton-he hasn't the faintest idea of how to link one gag to another, building the kind of comic line that tightens, tightens, tightens around them and ensnares the audience in analogous helplessness, the kind that results from masterfully...
...presence, a cipher who shows no feelings beyond a spaniel-like curiosity and momentary flutters of frustration that never approach the level of anxiety, let alone threaten him with breakdown. He and the people he encounters are scarcely less abstract than their settings, juiceless and lifeless. Going to a Tati movie for laughs is about as practical as going to an exhibition of Mondrian paintings with the same goal in mind, though the painter may actually excel the actor in terms of motion and emotion. · Richard Schickel