Mon Oncle, Tati and Obviously Genius Directors

Tati is absolutely brilliant. I’m sorry guys, but if you want loud, overdone slapstick, watch the remake of the pink panther. Consider the scene where Hulot meets a woman in an evening dress on the steps. You see his feet face away as she passes. This could be consideered a gag, yes, but Tati just displays it. It is part of this day, this life of Hulots. Brilliant

Tati is absolutely brilliant. I’m sorry guys, but if you want loud, overdone slapstick, watch the remake of the pink panther. Consider the scene where Hulot meets a woman in an evening dress on the steps. You see his feet face away as she passes. This could be consideered a gag, yes, but Tati just displays it. It is part of this day, this life of Hulots. Brilliant

Mon oncle is one of my favourite Tati films. I ’m also very fond of Les vacances de M. Hulot and Trafic.

Mon oncle is one of my favourite Tati films. I ’m also very fond of Les vacances de M. Hulot and Trafic.

Jacques Tati, the French master of sounds ànd visuals. Love, admiration, respect.
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Here’s my take on genius. A filmmaker who can produce a filmography as impressive as that of Ozu’s, Antonioni’s, Dreyer’s, or even Rohmer’s is obviously a genius in my book. But I also think it’s unfair to determine someone’s genius solely on the basis of their oeuvre, since even geniuses are capable of making mistakes, but the catch is that geniuses with very erratic oeuvres will show flashes of brilliance in a way non-geniuses won’t. Geniuses are still human and can make mistakes and can fall short of their potential. For example, I think Cassavetes, Truffaut, Fellini, Bertolucci, and Kieslowski were all geniuses, and each of them made at least one cinematic masterpiece, but their oeuvres as a whole were somewhat, if not very erratic in Bertolucci’s case especially. My point being that their respective filmographies in their entirety on not on the level of those of Dreyer or Ozu, or even Rohmer, but if one is perceptive enough in dissecting their work and analyzing them as a whole it become clear they were geniuses, at least to me. In Bertolucci’s case he is a genius as he’s still alive. Chabrol, Louis Malle, and the Dardennes Bros. on the other hand were/are all good, skilled filmmakers, but they were/are not geniuses, even if very intelligent perhaps. They just lack something the previous four had/have. Malle and/or Chabrol never had a 400 Blows, a Woman Under the Influence, a Before the Revolution, a Last Tango in Paris, an 8 1/2, or even a Double Life of Veronique, not that Veronique is necessarily KK’s best film. They just haven’t, just as Johannes Strauss never produced something on the level of Beethoven’s Fifth or Seventh Symphony, or even Stravinsky’s Symphony in C. And just as Billy Joel has never topped Odessey & Oracle.

I haven’t made up my mind about Haneke. He might be a genius, but I’m not sure, but his filmography is certainly not up there with Dreyer’s. Even if I’ve liked some of his films, my issue is he let’s his academic sensibility get the best of him at times in the same way Claire Denis does, and she’s also made films I’ve liked. However, if Haneke wasn’t such an academic he’d be making films like A Nos Amours, and A Woman Under the Influence.

Both Chabrol’s and Rohmer’s films tend to feel like exercises after a while, rather than fully conceived films, but at least Rohmer’s films are excercises within a genre entirely of his own creation.

I know I’m excercising auteur theory here, but let’s just conclude that a weak Bertolucci film is fascinating in its mediocrity, whereas a weak Chabrol film is just bleh…A perfect comparison would be The Dreamers and Bellamy. That’s not to say Chabrol’s never made a decent film. He has (i.e. La Ceremonie).