Banana A Day - Trafic

The character of Mr. Hulot was created by Jacques Tati and has appeared as the main character in four of his films. Rowan Atkinson says that Mr. Hulot was an influnece on his creation of Mr. Bean. This is very obvious in the 1971 film Trafic. Trafic is an observational comedy about the transferring of goods and the problems of traveling by vehicle. The movie is very similar to director Jacques Tati’s previous Mr. Hulot film Playtime in that most of the dialogue is reduced to background noise. Tati makes the visuals the important part of the film, and he is able to convey a massive amount of humour without any dialogue. This is the fourth and final Mr. Hulot film and it is interesting watching that the evolution of the character. In Playtime Hulot is a stranger to all the technological advances around him. In Trafic he is trying to adapt to the changing world and even works designing new vehicles. He doesn’t seem as aloof as he does in the previous film and Trafic seems like a fitting final film for his character.