Jacques Tati’s, “Playtime”, is a rare motion picture, created by a master filmmaker, given full control to do what he wants with his art. The movie reminds me of, “Citizen Kane”, in its immense originality and depth. It is a creation of extreme thought and imagination. It is also a very funny comedy.
“Playtime” follows the third installment of Tati’s self-portrayed character, “Monsieur Hulot”. Hulot is that hat wearing, pipe smoking, trench coat wearing, everyman, we first saw in, “Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday” and the superb, “My Uncle”. “My Uncle”, won countless awards, including the Academy award for best foreign film and these accolades gave Tati the freedom to make the movie he wanted to make. The result is, “Playtime”, and one of greatest movies ever made.
It is extremely difficult in trying to pinpoint exactly what this movie is trying to portray. It has no story, a made-up geography from a world-renowned city, and no central characters. Even Hulu is just one of many people who populate the strange world of Playtime. Tati built all the structures and streets to actual real-life measurements and used actual building materials to do so. The result is a steel and glass world of rectangular buildings, and paved streets that seem to go nowhere.
The film follows 24 hours within this world, which is stated as being Paris, France, from the airport to a commercial office building, a commercial trade center, a residential building, and a restaurant/nightclub. It begins and ends at the airport, with the arrival, and departure of a group of American tourists. The world Tati invented and built is today known as Tativille which to me seems to represent the future of France in 1967. He was not that far off from the Truth as late 20th century architecture built at the beginning of the 1970’s has a similar cold and un-aesthetic feel. Tati took the theme of industrial modernization, and how it effects people, as his basis of creating this strange new world. The fact that we are constantly reminded that we are supposedly in Paris, France, makes it that much stranger.
Monsieur Hulot is one of many characters who keep popping up within the goings on of this futuristic looking world. There is Barbara, a young American tourist, Mr. Schulz, the American businessman, a tour guide, a seemingly important old man and a small scrawny looking man who dresses and acts like Monsieur Hulot, to name just a few of the numerous people who populate every scene.
Tati films his story with a wide encompassing view, that allows enough space for numerous actions from different characters to occur. It is not possible to see everything with only one viewing of this movie. The movie develops from the initial scene of two people sitting on a bench at the airport, seemingly alone, to the spectacular Royal Garden nightclub scene, which is jam packed full of people who are constantly moving in all directions.
While most of Tati’s films are sparse in dialogue, Playtime takes this to a different extreme. I was privy to only passing conversations within the vast scope of what was playing out on screen, and very rarely were these conversations allowed to be complete and in most case was barely audible. That does not make the movie a silent film as sound is very important to the movie. By not using close-ups and fade ins in his scene constructions, Tati uses sound to allow the viewer to zero in on something that is happening within the confusion of his scenes. Whether it is the clip clip of shoes walking on hard steel floors or squishy sound of a sinking chair cushion. In most cases my attention was diverted to something that is extremely funny.
As for story structure, there is none. We have characters flowing from the airport to the office building, then to the trade event, and then the residential building, the nightclub and then finally back to the airport. The movie begins with a group of American tourists, who are always hilariously being counted by their tour guide, arriving at the airport, getting on a bus, and taken to a large modern office complex. From there we see Monsieur Hulut enter a skyscraper-like office building for a meeting. The desk clerk of the building needs to navigate a complex mechanized switchboard in order to call someone who walks down a very long corridor, in order to meet Hulut and tell him to enter a glass waiting room, which is situated just next to him, which emphasizes the wasted time of superfluous technology and absurd bureaucracy. This ridiculous situation is not only hilarious but tells you all you need to know about the world that the movie takes place in. From there Hulut never succeeds in meeting the man he has come to meet, ends up instead at a farcical trade show situated next door to the office complex. There are some crazy inventions being sold at the trade show, such has a door that does not make any noise when slammed shut and a cleaning mop with eye like electric lights. He is then invited to the modern apartment home of an old army buddy. Each apartment in this residential complex looks exactly the same with their clear glass exterior walls. I actually watched how a person in one of the apartments were watching a TV on an adjacent wall to their neighbor’s apartment, while the neighbor for example gets undressed, and the view from the outside looking in gives an impression that the neighbor is actually watching his fellow resident, rather than the TV. This is very funny as the comedy of the movie derives directly from situations rather than gags. There are many similarly insightful, and detailed nuances shown throughout the movie.
By nighttime, almost all of the characters end up at a night club called the “Royal Garden”. This night club/restaurant has just either been recently built, or had a major renovation recently completed, with the caveat that the construction has not actually been completed yet. While the club, which has a swinging jazz band playing inside, starts to fill up with guests made up of many of the characters we have already met, the walls and ceiling starts to slowly fall apart. Nobody actually seems to mind that the club is falling apart, as by the end of the evening, people are dancing drinking, eating, jumping up and down and are having a glorious time. The nightclub scene is a whopping 48-minute long. It is an extravaganza that seems to have countless movements happening all at the same time. If Tati wanted me to see something happening at the club, he would use sound, either via a crash, scream or swoosh in order to draw my attention. One funny situation is that the nightclub did not have enough time to allow the freshly painted chairs to dry. The chairs have a crown shaped headrest and everyone in the restaurant who sat on a chair have a crown printed on their backs due to the wet paint.
There is quite a lot of prophetic imagery in this amazing movie. For example, in the office building, Hulut is shown watching an office space from above and it is a space made up of countless cubicles that only pretend to contain privacy. The view from above shows how public they actually are. Amazingly this was created in 1967, before cubicles became the norm of commercial office work. The streets Tati creates here seemingly arrive nowhere and lead to an endless traffic circle that Tati films like a traditional Parisian carousel, emphasizing the running theme of people going nowhere as they are running from one commercial development to another. In addition, all of the vehicles in the movie look exactly the same, and all of the buildings are almost indistinguishable from each other.
It is clear to me that the world of Playtime is Jacques Tati’s weird otherworldly dream (or nightmare) about the absurdity of man’s rush into modernization at all costs. It is a surrealistic and prophetic film of imaginary brilliance.
1001 Movies before you die 