Is there a more modern phenomenon than the automobile traffic jam? A pileup of technology, population movement, and dehumanization, traffic is a natural subject for writer-director-star Jacques Tati, whose perceptive pratfall comedies are often concerned with how our humanity gets lost in the particulars of “progress.” And yet it’s surprising how much of Trafic, his 1971 film, meanders away from this central focus to travel down little side roads in pursuit of random comic diversions. Yes, we do get a multi-car crash that unfolds like a Rube Goldberg machine, as well as a climactic long shot of pedestrians with umbrellas zig zagging through a massive array of stalled vehicles. And the plot proper does involve cars, as it follows a French automaker’s mishap-laden attempts to bring their latest design to an expo in Amsterdam (many of the mishaps are due to the fact that Tati’s bumbling Monsieur Hulot is part of the design team). Still, long stretches abandon this thematic concern, along with its distinct formal possibilities, for quaint comic interludes that are more concerned with quiet village life. Of course they’re amusing on their own terms, perhaps intended as a counterpoint to the noisy car scenes. The movie also features Maria Kimberly as the automaker’s publicist, who is something of a female variation on Hulot. She’s far more competent—pulling outfits and accessories out of every pocket of her convertible that perfectly meet whatever occasion she finds herself in—but no less a figure of oblivious chaos (she’s the cause of that central crash). Blithely sailing through the movie with an air of disruptive cheer, she’s the comic partner you never knew Tati needed.
