What happens when an Oscar-winning director is handed a blank check and decides to build an entire functioning city of glass and steel just to make one movie? For Jacques Tati, the answer was nine years of obsession, bankruptcy, and the loss of his family home. This is the story of a comedy legend whose gentle, lighthearted films hid a relentless, self-destructive perfectionism.
We trace Tati's improbable journey from Russian-aristocratic roots and Depression-era mime to the creation of Monsieur Hulot and his ruinous masterpiece Playtime. Along the way we confront the dark contradiction at the heart of his legacy: a man who championed human connection on screen while abandoning his own daughter in a war zone. It's a deep dive into the impossible cost of holding a perfect mirror up to humanity.
How Tati gave up a comfortable picture-framing family business to become a mime during the Great Depression
The clever twin-camera gamble on Jour de Fete that saved his directing career when the color film failed
The creation of Monsieur Hulot and the Academy Award win for Mon Oncle, where he asked only to meet Keaton, Laurel, and Sennett
How Playtime and the construction of "Tativille" became the most expensive French film ever and bankrupted him
The hidden story of his abandoned daughter Helga and grandson Richard's blistering open letter about The Illusionist
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