Jacques Tati/Play Time

Even France's icons, the cultural treasures of 'La Grande Nation', appear as nothing more than minor, short-lived cameos in a bigger picture. The historical Paris of the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre is only a reflection in the glass windows of 'Tativille', the satellite town built for the film and then later torn down. Some of the skyscrapers were actually on wheels. Later though, as if in revenge, Paris absorbed the terrain of Tativille - or so the curators of the exhibition argue, assuming a remarkable short circuit of imagination and reality. According to them, Tativille actually exists to the west of Paris, in the form of La Défense, the business district built during the Mitterand era to herald the next 30 glorious years. Tati thus becomes a vital link between two eras, and the idea of him as the paradigmatic filmmaker of the modern era is one the French have started to embrace. Tati is finally achieving the recognition he deserves and no longer constantly being confused with the comic character of Hulot, who is actually thoroughly conservative and not particularly pleasant.

The film's just as notable for its sound design - all echoes and ambience.

there is a tati season at the NFT in london during aug i think. so i was gonna do a thread there (i prob will anyway).

Play Time in 70mm! Run don't walk!

Tati actually had hoped to set up a theater that would show Play Time every day, year 'round. The idea being that it needs to be seen several times, and from different positions in the theater, to be fully appreciated.

Go see Belleville Rendezvous for lots of humorous Tati references. Also it is an amazing film. Really funny.

Tati was a populist. I first saw films like 'Trafic' with my grandparents in the early 70s in regular Edinburgh cinemas. They were the only French films on general release in Britain at the time. They didn't feel like foreign films because there was no dialogue, no subtitles. There were just these visual gags, rooted in Tati's past in pro rugby, pantomime and burlesque, sight gags pointed up with the most amazing, exaggerated and eloquent sound design. So although it was cartoony and populist, there was also stuff going on in the films that you could consider formalist fine art. The sound could have come from the electroacoustics of Schaeffer and Henry, the gesture could have been developed in the physical theatre of Le Coq. There was obviously a visual intelligence at work that went far, far beyond the cartoon level. Imagine Mr Bean shot by Peter Greenaway.

I often think of Tati's Play Time alongside Godard's Week End (not coindentally, two titles based on English phrases adopted into French were used for two films which--among other things--examine the absurdity of modern life)...even though Tati was, as you say, a populist (although he admired Godard's work and expressed a desire to work with him), his play with form and his very *extremity* pushed him into the realm of the avant-garde. Both artists seem to ask too much of the cinema, ask it to do things the audience is unprepared and perhaps even literally unable to do (in Tati's case, follow several lines of action and several developing gags in one widescreen image; in Godard's case, assembled a story presented in fragments of scenes, flash frames, etc.). ...

Why, none other than my current album, 'Oskar Tennis Champion', which is named after an early Tati short and takes as its theme the collision of Modernist Utopia with the bananaskin of human fallibility. It's Tati's theme, but it seemed very relevant to me in 2002 because

1. We were looking at the 20th century -- and Modernism -- as something completed, finished, and asking ourselves what became of its utopian dreams.

2. 9/11 had just happened; a day on which jets demolished two Modernist towers closely resembling the set Tati built for 'Playtime'. It would be insensitive to call that a pratfall, but perhaps it was the biggest bananaskin in history.

I knew it would be mostly silent and that the lack of subtitles was supposed to mirror or induce the same confusion as Hulot (the quiet door-slam manager slipping in and out of German, in and out of subtitles &c.) You could see a lot of the joins, that you could see the people being directed, some scenes just far too busy with synthetic life moving just so.

I knew it would be relatively slow paced but not with these infuriating still lingers where Tati just waits for everything he wants off the screen to move off the screen. I don't like slapstick really or when one joke gets spun out into the thinnest thread you couldn't hang a sylph off.

I didn't find it funny but more than that it was frustrating, I could feel my insides flexing trying to move me - it took me quite a while to get up off my seat even though my brain was willing me upwards, a reverse vertigo had set in to counteract the constant twitching inside me that had mounted into me wanting to leave. It was really uncomfortable. So I crept out quietly after an hour.

I'm probably being unfair or not 'getting it' or not even giving it a chance but when something provokes such a severe physiological discomfort I think my reactions are 'valid' (and honest), however ex post facto rationalising they are.

Not since the silent era has Hollywood actually privileged the visual over the textual. And I think if you're not the kind of person who enjoys modern dance (cos Tati is basically a brilliant choreographer) or can stand in front of an Andreas Gursky photo for several minutes (cos Tati is an amazing photographer -- that exterior night scene where we see into two apartment windows at the same time!) then you probably will find Tati frustrating. God knows, the film bombed when it came out, so you're not alone.

But 'Playtime' is certainly amongst the top 100 films of the 20th century, and says -- without words! -- some incredibly important things about how people lived then. Its stature grows with each year. Some may find it unwatchable (too visual to be watchable?) but it will be watched for a long time to come.

Elaborately constructed slapstick makes me marvel at its ingenuity, but ingenuity is better served in engineering or architecture rather than working out a way for someone to get kicked up the arse.

But that's exactly the thing that's so great about Tati! We try, with ingenuity and engineering, to construct a perfect world, but there's always some little snag tripping up our utopia, some spanner in the works. But then someone comes along who, with ingenuity and engineering, depicts the exact way the spanner enters the works, and puts as much talent into showing stuff breaking down as others put into fixing it! He even builds a simu-city outside the real city only to model the way things go wrong, then pulls it all down! He's either a madman or...

The scene in Playtime with Hulot trying out on weirdly-reacting soft chairs in a pristine vitrine-like corporate lobby is similar. It's not just a Mr Bean fart joke, it's a study of the texture of the chairs themselves and a comment on the incompatibility between Modernist design and the human form, between the human and the corporate scale... And it's an elegant rumination on the impossibility of elegance.

best movie

Sounds like you need to pick up that boxset.

sometimes i just sit and think about the nightclub scene

that scene is a comic apocalypse! it's also kind of exhausting (in a good way)

His films feel really long to me. I guess it's because you're mostly just observing groups of people from a distance.

they don't have conventional plots at all -- mon oncle might come closest, but even that one's pretty far from any classical model of narrative construction. hulot's holiday is just a series of repetitions and variations, like a 80-minute elaboration on gag structure. playtime is kind of a block construction, right? it's one set piece after another, loosely linked, culminating in the restaurant set piece.

i can see that being one reason they feel 'long' -- i know what you mean, although i'd say it's more complex, like they simply confound my usual sense of the duration of watching a film.

but you could also say that of the 'transformers' movies :(

i can see that being one reason they feel 'long' -- i know what you mean, although i'd say it's more complex, like they simply confound my usual sense of the duration of watching a film.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, January 12, 2016 6:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well yeah, I mean they're almost completely devoid of conventional pacing and plot, so the audience has nothing familiar to hang onto for orientation in that sense. Part of his exploration seemed to be to just let things play out as if observing the scene from a window somewhere nearby for awhile.

yeah tbh i think the lack of linear narrative is part of the surreal charm of his films, it's v observational and still communicates an idea

No I think it's fantastic! Just reflecting on how it affects the momentum of them overall, at least for me.

totally, it's like he has this way of dissecting the mundane minutes & seconds of life and stretching them out into beautiful tapestries to get lost in

but at the same time the passage of time is really clearly defined throughout, like when day turns to night etc

watched this with his cyrus last night. didn't think he would make it all the way, but he dug it. he's 10.

My two boys, 6 and 3, totally ate up Mr Hulot's Holiday, even though it's black and white and from the stone ages

yeah i think there's enough of a curiosity factor as in: what the hell are they/he doing???? and also what the hell is gonna happen next?

cyrus loved the buster keaton movies we watched a couple of years ago. he will groan if i say i'm gonna watch an old movie sometimes. but he still says how much he loved the keaton movie "with the cannibals".

NOT a chaplin fan though. barely made it 10 minutes into a few of those.

Which ones?

"yeah i think there's enough of a curiosity factor as in: what the hell are they/he doing???? and also what the hell is gonna happen next?"

Yeah, it's the same kind of fun as looking at all the details in a Where's Waldo, just more in sequence and a bit more zoomed in.

I ask in regards to Chaplin because I feel like a kid with any tolerance for silent comedy would at least love Modern Times?

...which is, really, not silent

Well sure, but it's still mostly silent and behaves like a silent film.

but at the same time the passage of time is really clearly defined throughout, like when day turns to night etc

yeah, he is very very concerned with duration, but also with routine. so he's very careful about how the passage of time is depicted in his films. "playtime" is a really interesting instance of compression -- i don't think there's a single obvious ellipse in the film but we get a full day, a night, and the morning after in the space of about two hours.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5c/c1/54/5cc154cac27aa56c8307ad481160c15d.gif

I was just thinking abt that scene yesterday

what kind of a screen did you watch Play Time on, hon?

(Evan, Modern Times has a music-and-effects track throughout! it hardly ever stops. people say silent when they mean 'dialogueless')

xp it was like a smallish (36"?) widescreen TV, much too small. I spent most of the film daydreaming about how incredible it would be on a giant screen.

(Evan, Modern Times has a music-and-effects track throughout! it hardly ever stops. people say silent when they mean 'dialogueless')

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 26, 2016 4:18 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess I've misremembered it! I should revisit.

there are even a few spoken words, and gibberish singing

I did remember the few spoken word bits, but had totally forgotten about the gibberish singing scene.

Still my point was leaning more towards that I think a kid might easily enjoy Modern Times.

i once had an argument with someone who insisted that tati was "basically a silent filmmaker", an assertion he was incredible fond of but which is controverted by the first five seconds of "mr. hulot's holiday."

i'd agree with that, evan

i think i could listen to just the audio tracks of his movies on their own. such amazing sounds.

yeah, they are basically elaborate (and fetching!) pieces of musique concrete.

in fact, there's a collection, "tati sonorama," where the first CD is selections from his films' musical scores, and the second is basically raw chunks of the soundtracks -- music, sound effects, dialogue (such as it is), etc. i prefer the second CD!

you should get it while it's still vaguely affordable, since it's out of print: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00186VRJI/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=&sr=

On last night's Carson rerun on Antenna, one of the main guests was Chevy Chase (this was in '79), and he singled out Tati for extensive praise when asked by Johnny about who made him laugh.

You should repost that on his defend the indefensible thread.

My dad loved Jacques Tati, but my dad was a weird Francophile.

Playtime was incredible. Trafic wasn't quite Playtime, but it was still pretty great

I think my second favorite Tati film after Playtime though is Mon Oncle

Boy, my students, to my surprise, took to Playtime yesterday. It took them a while to let its rhythms work on them, though.

Why surprise?

Long, French, no close-ups, made before May 2019.

and I assume the screen wasn't mammoth, which is a disadvantage

I've got an auditorium, so the projector screen is wall-sized.

oh that's good

saw M Hulot's Holiday for the first(!) time the other night. loved it. maybe my favorite type of movie, just gently whimsical and absurd, a repetitive jazz score which plays off the environs perfectly, a gently sad ending as he pauses and then just decides to get in his car and head off.

i was blown away by the fact that much of the boat/shark gag was filmed in 1978(!!)

Had no idea there were two versions! I guess that scene is a Jaws reference then?

the scene i can't get enough of is when he's painting his boat and the can of paint keeps floating around to the other side of the boat and he never even clocks it's moved but somehow always puts his paintbrush down exactly where it's floated to in order to load up with more paint, just the best