International Lampoon

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More About

• Jacques Tati
• Charles de Gaulle

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In his gracefully odd movements, the French writer-director-actor Jacques Tati resembled the adult offspring of General Charles de Gaulle and a large stork. From his leaning, lurching walk to his ever-present umbrella and raincoat, everything about Monsieur Hulot, Tati’s onscreen alter ego, says “out of place.” Or, rather, out of time, for Hulot is forever endeavoring to navigate France’s awkward transition from a bucolic, class-defined village society to the casual rudeness and upward mobility of postwar urban life. “Jacques Tati: Genius of French Comedy,” a retrospective of five deliciously composed and structured comic features, provides the full assortment of sight gags and physical farce that made up the filmmaker’s arsenal of gently barbed whimsy. In Mon Oncle (1958), screening today, Hulot runs amusingly afoul of various forms of machinery, from the space-age kitchen in his sister’s ostentatiously modern house to the high-tech factory where his brother-in-law gets him a job. As social critics go, Tati was a lampoonist and tickler refreshingly unafflicted with bitterness and bile. His films seem more tender as the years pass — no doubt because city living keeps getting harsher — but they are not naive.
Jan. 31-Feb. 11, 2 p.m., 2010