Parade

A film by Jacques Tati

Jacques Tati’s last – and least known – film, Parade, sees his return to the boisterous music hall world in which he began his career as a mime artist in the 1930s. Ostensibly nothing more than a series of circus acts hosted by Tati and preformed for a family audience, Parade is in fact a brilliantly conceived spectacle which blurs all distinctions between performers and audience, accomplished acrobats and children at play. Offering gloriously funny visual gags that flow beautifully from one act to another – including several of his most famous pantomimes – Parade is the perfect stage for Tati’s comic genius.

“It’s a sign of this film’s greatness that the enormous sadness that accompanies the final leave-taking of the circus interior is a good deal more than the conclusion of an unpretentious evening’s entertainments; it’s a sublime and awesome coda to the career of one of this century’s greatest artists” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader