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After giving a quick look at French actor/writer/director Jacques Tati's early films, those new to his work could easily think he should be slotted alongside classic silent-comedy stars like Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, as his abilities as a mime and with physical comedy, as well as the bemused quality of his characters fit that mold very well. However, Tati worked in a world of "talkies", even if you barely needed to understand a word spoken to really enjoy his movies, which frequently used society's obsession on progress, innovation and technology as a target for his comedy and commentary. His characters are old-school and struggle with change, but the movies aren't laughing at them. They serve to show the problems found in forgetting the past.

One of the things that set Tati apart from the earlier greats was his ability as a filmmaker. Not to take anything away from pioneers like Lloyd and Keaton, who were masters at pulling off a gag for the camera, but Tati's artistry was on another level, as he crafted beautiful imagery to go along with his comedy, culminating in his masterwork, the stunning PlayTime, which brought together all the skill he showed in his brief, but impressive filmmaking career, in one mammoth, misunderstood spectacle that downplayed his most popular creation and offered a beautiful meditation on modern life.

For this collection, Criterion gathered together the Tati films they've released over the years -- Mon Oncle, M. Hulot's Holiday, PlayTime and Trafic -- and filled in the gaps with the first feature he directed, Jour de Fete, the last film he made, Parade and a disc of Tati-related shorts, to create a rather complete overview of the man's career, adding in a smorgasbord of extras to rise it pass complete to ultimate.
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