Parade

Jacques Tati’s final film is the rarest of his feature-length works. Made for Swedish television and never released in North America, Parade features Tati as Monsieur Loyal, ringmaster of an eccentric circus in which the boundaries between artists and spectators dissolve in great calamitous fun. Tati himself performs some of his most celebrated mime routines, including several of his legendary “sporting impressions” from his music-hall days. Bergman regular Gunnar Fischer was one of the cinematographers. “Not so much a work of art as an experience of pleasure, a delightful confection of little substance but enormous fun, a potpourri of jokes, mimes and music that amuses, charms and captivates” (London Film Festival). “A far greater achievement than most accounts would lead you to believe . . . A sublime and awesome coda to the career of one of the century’s great artists” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). “Touching . . . The great cycle of life, for Jacques Tati, was not so much a matter of cosmic truth as something that you pedaled into a hedge” (Anthony Lane, The New Yorker). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 75 mins.