frfilmtv1-6, Exercise 2: Tati and de Funès

Model answer:

Tati made a few carefully constructed visual comedies with very little dialogue, where the humour comes from how people and machines move in a space, with his character Monsieur Hulot wandering through modern life without understanding it. Example: Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953), Mon oncle (1958) or Playtime (1967).

De Funès was a manic, bad-tempered star of fast, crowd-pleasing farces that were big box-office hits. Example: Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964) or La Grande Vadrouille (1966, with Bourvil).

The Illusionist (2010) is an animated film by Sylvain Chomet made from an unproduced Tati script about an old stage magician in a world that no longer wants him, and set partly in Edinburgh (check).