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Jacques Tati’s lost film reveals family’s pain


31 January 2010

An unfilmed Jacques Tati screenplay, L'illusionniste, will finally make it to the screen after 54 years, when director Sylvain Chomet's animated version has its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, Berlinale, next month. But the occasion threatens to be overshadowed by a story of pain and scandal from the real life of the French comedian.

Chomet's treatment of Tati's poignant tale has been much awaited since his award-winning 2003 animation, ­Belleville Rendez-Vous. L'illusionniste tells of an old-fashioned, ageing magician whose encounter with a young girl changes his life, in a narrative believed to have been written by Tati as a personal message to his teenage daughter.

In 2000, the screenplay was handed over to Chomet by Tati's daughter, Sophie, two years before her death. Now, however, the family of Tati's illegitimate and estranged eldest child, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel, who lives in the north-east of England, are calling for the French director to give her credit as the true inspiration for the film.

The script of the L'illusionniste, they say, was Tati's response to the shame of having abandoned his first child and it remains the only public recognition of her existence. They accuse Chomet of attempting to airbrush out their painful family legacy again.

"The sabotaging of Tati's original L'illusionniste script, without recognising his troubled intentions, so that it resembles little more than a grotesque, eclectic, nostalgic homage to its author is the most disrespectful act," claims Richard McDonald, Tati's grandson, in a letter to the Observer.

Helga and her three children – Kenneth, Grahame and Richard – believe they are the only surviving descendants of the star who created such classics as ­Monsieur Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle.

Helga's story, kept quiet during her childhood to protect her father's reputation, came to light when news of Chomet's plans for the film were made public and Richard McDonald travelled to Northumberland where the film was being made. The McDonalds' claims were originally researched and verified by the academic and biographer David Bellos, who had been approached by the family after his book about Tati was published in 1999.

Tati, born Jacques Tatischeff in 1907, originally met Helga's Austrian emigrée mother, Herta Schiel, when she and her sister were working with him in music-hall theatre in Paris during the German Occupation. When Herta became pregnant, Tati's formidable sister Nathalie, a wealthy businesswoman, advised him not to marry. Eventually, Herta was persuaded to sign a legal document releasing the performer from his duties as a father in return for money and she left the country with her baby, going on to marry another man.

Tati's treatment of Herta and her child was the scandal of theatrical circles in Paris and he was shunned by many of his former colleagues at the Lido de Paris.

"Everyone took the young woman's side and left Tati out in the cold," Bellos has recorded.

Tati was forced to leave the theatre for a while, working first in Berlin and then living in seclusion in the ­village of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre, which later became the inspiration for his 1949 film, Jour de Fête, regarded as one of the most influential works in French cinema.

Helga saw her father on film posters and cinema screens all over Europe as she grew up, living for a period in an orphanage in north Africa. As a teenager in Morocco, she made one of several attempts to reach her father, writing to him and asking for his help.

This, says Richard McDonald, was around the time Tati was writing the screenplay of L'illusionniste. The shame surrounding his decision to drop Herta is thought to have prevented Tati from making any attempt to contact his daughter. Later, the young Helga took a job in Paris as an au pair, but she never met her father. She did, however, meet many of her mother's former colleagues in the Paris music hall, who all confirmed the story of her abandonment.

Inheriting her parents' love of theatre, she trained as a dancer and went on ­holiday with friends to Spain where she met Norman McDonald, the Englishman she was later to marry.

Today her son describes her as "a much-loved grandmother" and argues that "the least she deserves is respectful acknowledgement", adding: "My grandfather's artistry did not come without a price and the one who suffered the most for his compulsive behaviour was, ­inexcusably, his eldest daughter."

L'illusionniste Film Page

Source: Guardian Online

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/jacques-tati-lost-film-family-illusionniste