Evening Class

Tati made this film during the course of filming Playtime. This must have been the price he paid the devil for the miracle he performed in the longer movie. Here, he teaches a wordless course in mime for an audience of attentive note-takers. I became catatonic early on in this eternal twenty minutes of torture (really, I haven't been this far in Hell since I took 4 grams of mushrooms in 78). Tati is a fisherman, a horseback rider, a tennis player, etc., observing every boring nuance that would make anyone wonder why a kind human being would want to perform such quotidian behavior before a still-living audience.

Even worse than Parade.

Tati's one of my top three directors. Don't watch this.

Jacques Tati, wearing his familiar slouch hat, macintosh and smoking his pipe, goes into a large, modern building and addresses a group of eager men on the techniques of humorous observation.

They don't get it, of course, because that's the message Tati sent in his celebrated films: that people are obsessed with how to do things and the trappings of success, whether it be a vacation at a well-regarded hotel at a fashionable resort, or a giant metal fish fountain in a tiny garden; not for M. Hulot, who goes about his pursuits in a way that interests him.

And so while his students watch Tati do quick impressions of various sorts of tennis players, they fail in the practical aspects of his study. They fail to bump into walls convincingly, then argue among themselves about that failure.

If you like Jacques Tati then see this but it´s nothing of his better works.I saw this on the Criterion Collection DVD Playtime.It includes some funny things, but the horse riding bit is not good.Still Tati has some good moments.So if you are a fan of Tati I recommend you to take a look at it. It´s hard to rate short films but if I must I would give this a 3+ out of 5.

In "Cours du Soir" a dim-witted acting instructor teaches acting to a class of equally dim-witted students. This might work well on paper, but the movie is awful. I don't know how Jacques Tati, a master of film and comedy.could have made it, acted in it, and had his name attached to it, unless a gun was held to his head for the entire project. Incidentally, the title has been mis-translated as "Evening Classes." It should be "Evening Class." The French word "cours" serves as both the singular and plural. It's clear only one class is being taught here.

I have never understood the work of Jacques Tati. His Mr. Hulot character was beloved and he made several successful films. However, I've seen several of the films and have never found his pantomiming entertaining. Now this is NOT because I hate pantomime (I love Mr. Bean) nor is it because I hate French films (they are among my very favorites)...I just don't think Hulot is funny at all. Well, I decided to try once again...and found "Evening Classes" about as funny as staring at a bowl of snot for 30 minutes.

Tati plays the Hulot character but talks quite a bit, unlike what I've seen in his other films. He's teaching an acting class and teaches such things as how to play tennis, ride a horse and trip on stairs...none of which, NONE, made me laugh or even smile. It was dry as dust and proof that Hulot-lovers will watch ANYTHING in which the character appears.