This is a documentary:

In 1978, the relatively obscure Italian football team, Bastia, made it to a first-time finals of the Champion’s League, against PSV Eindhoven. Tati was asked by fellow friend, and club Mediterrané founder, Gilberto Trigano, to document the final match in Italy.

It’s quite Tati in that it foregrounds everything but the actual match itself.

Heh. Kinda moist, eh?

It has an unrealness going on: Many of the sounds are obviously not real, but added later. Sometimes the sounds are realistic (“squish squish”) and sometimes they’re more for comedic effect.

It’s a pretty odd documentary, but it has charm.

And I’m not quite sure whether it’s really a documentary or a mockumentary. Trying to dry up a pitch with a bucket and a broom… I mean, it could be real?

And if it’s not real, Tati hired a lot of extras.

What!??! Some actual footballering!?

It’s pretty good.

Forza Bastia. Jacques Tati, Sophie Tatischeff. 1978. ⚃

At first I didn’t quite understand whether this movie was showing a genuine thing from France — men standing around, buying each others rounds of patisserie. But that’s the gag: These are alcohol-drenched baked goods, so they’re getting sloshed.

So that’s the joke. But… uhm… OK, it’s a thirteen minute short, but…

Hm:

It won the César Award For best short fiction film in 1978.

It was directed by Tati’s daughter.

Degustation maison. Sophie Tatischeff. 1978. ⚃

So… this is a bunch of skits collected as being an evening class — Tati is the teacher, of course, and shows off his skills at enacting various stuff, like “first time smoker” and stuff.

It rapidly becomes a rather flimsy conceit, as we’re taken to a tennis court (while the students are allegedly looking down from the building above).

So it’s just a series of scenes where Tati is being his goofy self, which is funny enough, I guess.

Here he’s demonstrating fishing.

He’d done some of these gags already in the short of the same name, and the following movie, but the facteurs gags are still hilarious.

But the rest is like… “Hey, Jacques! You’re a funny guy. You used to do vaudeville, right? Can you do 30 minutes of sight gags?” And then he did.

But we’re not talking roll-on-the-floor funny. More like amusing, and not always even that.

But when it’s funny, it’s funny.

Evening Class. Nicolas Ribowski. 1967. ⚃