PLAYTIME directed by Jacques Tati (France, 1967)
With all the plate glass windows in this movie it’s only a matter of time before someone mistakes one for an open doorway. It’s a gag waiting to happen but Jacques Tati is more interested in taunting the audience and playing with their expectations than giving them the payoff too quickly.
He also does this by having other actors adopt the Monsieur Hulot look of half mast trousers, suede shoes, Argyle socks, beige mac, trilby hat , pipe and umbrella. This leads to several instances of mistaken identity while the real Hulot is confined to something akin to a cameo role.
This reflects the fact that Tati was feeling boxed in by the success of his popular creation. Rather than rest on his laurels, he wanted his comedy to be more challenging.
He therefore dispenses with a predictable storyline in favour of a movie where the theme of modernity is in lieu of any actual plot. As in Mon Oncle, sophisticated technology is shown as making relatively simple tasks more complicated and only serve to create more barriers to meaningful communication.
The result of Tati’s adoption of a more experimental approach in Playtime is a movie that was posthumously hailed as a masterpiece but all but bankrupted him during his lifetime. The paying public failed to be sufficiently impressed by the elaborate sets, which came to be known as ‘Tativille’, or the meticulously choreographed scenes. They came to the cinema to be entertained and left feeling cheated. Continue reading
