Trafic (1971)

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1. 

   Siskoid

   You could almost believe Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot jumped right out of Mon Oncle and into Trafic, in which the light slapstick figure is a car designer and has all sorts of trouble getting the ridiculous new design out to a car show in Amsterdam. The film is of course an excuse to weave comic sequences about car travel - car trouble, traffic jams, accidents, being stopped by customs, parking, road rage, etc. - which is perhaps why I don't quite like it as much as other Tati films. I famously don't drive, but more than that, Tati's usual reliance on noises means the movie is almost wall to wall car and highway sounds, which tend to annoy me. The subject matter also robs the picture of the nicest part of any Tati film, the contrast of the modern with the quaint and traditional. Though the "camping car" is an echo of that idea, we only really get back to that theme around the hour mark, when people start getting out of their cars. And yet, there are a lot of nice observations, and plenty of amusing physical gags, and if I took off points for the above complaints, I restore them for the gorgeous cinematography. This may be Tati's most beautiful work in terms of framing, color and scope! 4 years 12 months ago
2. 

   boomdiddly

   Comedies, more than any other genre, are incredibly dependent upon personal tastes.
   This movie, thus, was not to my personal liking. I had high expectations after enjoying Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday) a great deal. However, the laugh-worthy bits of this movie were few and far between. The

   showing of the camper to the police, the twenty-five car pile-up, and the various traffic montages revealing people's personalities and how they're linked to their cars

   were funny, but the rest of the movie is painful.
   Maria Kimberly is the worst part of the mess--by the end of the film (or somewhere in the middle) I was hoping she'd be hit by a passing car.
   Also, Hulot doesn't really do anything in this film. He has a fair amount of screen-time, yes, but hardly any of it is actually screen-worthy.
   My opinion: watch this if you're French or in the mood for some existential art flick. 10 years 2 months ago
3. 

   elcid

   A sociological critic of modern life, it excels in showing how ridiculous is to make from automobiles some kind of special object, when they are part of the mass with almost human like adaptation, only people that design or repair them, can have a satisfying life, Hulot and the PR-woman are the 'villains' of the film trying to achieve the impossible and only making things at the end worse. There are many other finer points but I am to lazy to write it down, English not being my first or second language. 1 year 3 months ago

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