Playtime

I feel your displeasure, Monsieur Tati.  I was in Paris some years back and noticed imposing structures of glass and steel in the distance.  I did not want to travel over there.  It looked cold and symmetrical.  I was happy walking around Montmartre.  Stepping through centuries old cathedrals and under arches.  If I wanted an urban scape I could've stayed in the U.S.

In your 1967 film PLAYTIME, a curious repeated motif underscored your point.  We see mere reflections in glass doors of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.  The real Paris.  Those doors, so modern, are your true focus, ones attached to skyscrapers filled with offices, which are filled with cubicles.  Secretaries repeat telephone greetings over and over as footmen toil in rows of cubicles. You once again portray M. Hulot, a somewhat awkward fellow with an odd gait under that overcoat and pipe.  Hulot was seen twice before in your movies, ones I've yet to explore.  He is always in the margins, almost a ghost, occasionally interacting with someone although usually only when there is some bit of slapstick ballet.  This is a good way to describe most of PLAYTIME, I think.

You begin at the airport and conclude on the streets of Paris, which I read you recreated out in the country on enormous, expensive sets.  We follow some people around, often only hearing their words as if by eavesdropping, or indistinct chatter.  There is no traditional plotting or narrative, though we do follow the events with linearity.  There is a group of American tourists, one of whom is named Barbara, attractive and somewhat confused by this new place.  She tries and tries to get a picture of a street vendor, but the shot is always ruined by a passerby.  Hmmmm.

Your Hulot follows a curiously similar journey.  He also repeatedly attempts to meet an important businessman, but the mazes of artificiality and harshly lit elevators will complicate things.  So will scores of gadgets, many prone to malfunction.  I smiled when the air conditioner in the restaurant failed.  When I was in Paris I felt that France hadn't quite figured out how to centrally cool a room to satisfaction.  Or am I just being a spoiled Americain?

PLAYTIME is filled with astonishing sequences, especially the action viewed in adjacent apartments from the street and the night at the restaurant that takes up nearly half of the film's running time.  I will have to revisit your film who knows how often to feel as if I have a true handle on it.  This is a work of genius, reminiscent of the silents.  You do have your own shtick, though, Jacques Tati, and I believe you have earned all the adulation (and Criterion treatment of your films).  What most resonated on my first viewing of PLAYTIME was the ending, where your amiable but enigmatic character appears to make a romantic connection, but life spins her away, back to her tour bus and you into some sort of void.  Or rather further around a Paris of sleek but empty form.