Movie Night: Trafic (1971)

Trafic_TatiSunday March 29th 2015. Movie Night: Trafic by Jacques Tati, 1971, 96 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

Trafic (Traffic) is a 1971 Italian-French comedy film directed by Jacques Tati.Trafic was the last film to feature Tati’s famous character of Monsieur Hulot, and followed the vein of earlier Tati films that lampooned modern society.

In Trafic, Hulot is a bumbling automobile designer who works for Altra, a Paris auto plant. He, along with a truck driver and a publicity agent, Maria, takes a new camper-car (designed by Hulot) to an auto show in Amsterdam. On the way there, they encounter various obstacles on the road. Some of the obstacles that Hulot and his companions encounter are getting impounded by Dutch customs guards, a car accident (meticulously choreographed by the filmmakers), and an inefficient mechanic. In the film, “Tati leaves no element of the auto scene unexplored, whether it is the after-battle recovery moments of a traffic-circle chain-reaction accident, whether it a study of drivers in repose or garage-attendants in slow-motion, the gas-station give-away (where the busts of historical figures seem to find their appropriate owners) or the police station bureaucracy.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Doors open at 8pm, film begins at 9pm, free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net