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.

Yes, I do find him a sympathetic character.. As I say, that end sequence is really poignant. His attempts to communicate with and be chivalrous toward this woman as they walk through the city in the morning.. Knowing the possibility of meaningful interaction is remote, that she is soon to depart, but making the attempt ... he buys her a gift .. I don't know. The way they sort of randomly ended up in each other's company in the early morning after the nightlong of revelry at the restaurant.. It's touchingly romantic and very sad at the same time.

have you noticed the moment where she leans on his shoulder to fix her shoe (??) and he notices she's wearing a wedding ring?

my favorite moment (maybe?) in "jour de fete" is when the buzzing bee leaves francois to bother the farmer on a hill, but there's no bee, there's just a buzzing noise which changes pitches to indicate where and who he's bothering. a good example of tati's use of sound cues to replace visual cues and his use of the whole screen/sound world.

so you saw the color version? apparently tati's daughter--she oversaw the restoration, and was a filmmaker herself--used one of her father's revised soundtracks for the film (maybe from the 60s?) instead of the original, which angered some people. i don't know enough about it to know if she made the right decision; maybe the 1948 soundtrack was a mess when it came time to restore the film in 1994. but the color is definitely worth it. i was surprised when i saw it how muted and subtle were the colors considering the technology being used. certainly they don't feel like the kind of oversaturated color being used in some hollywood productions at that time. worth nothing too is that the original "black and white" version included some stray objects and bits of decor stencilled in various colors for effect. something that has its own beauty, so it's worth seeing "both" versions (both is in quotes because it seems like there's actually 100 versions of this film).

haha yeah that's great! my mind explodes at the thought of how hard that shot must have been to set up.

i like the way tati (ha! i almost typed "godard"! well it IS sort of similar to "week-end") finds select mometnts--literally moments, not even entire shots sometimes--to isolate hulot and the young american tourist, so that its clear they've caught each other's eye somehow but have little time or space to go any further in the midst of the restaurant and other chaos.

yeh, similarly with the sequence when the two waiters are carrying out the chef mannequin so that it looks on-screen like they're carrying an actual body.

as for "jour de fete's" antiamericanism, i think it's more of an ambivalence, lampooning both the american's obsession with efficiency and the french's eagerness and perhaps inability to adapt quickly.

in "playtime" it's not necessarily antiamericanism (though the figure of the rich texan guy is definitely a silly, even a bit affectionate, stab--but his lines were cowritten with art buckwald) as much as a lampoon of the general tendency of modernist urban architecture (perhaps in its way the ultimate symbol of corporate consolidation and power) to turn every place into the same place. this is literalized in those hilarious travel posters in the lobby, where you have "the alps" with a skiier flying past a skyscraper identical to the one tati is walking around in.

haha! though granted a good half of them are mine...

and this by colette, on tati's sport mimes: "he is both the player and the ball, the football and the goalkeeper, the boxer and his opponent, the bicycle and its rider. he makes you see invisible partners, and objects in his empty hands. he plays on your imagination with the talent of a great artist... when jacques tati imitates horse and rider, paris sees a mythological creature come to life, the centaur."

The day after Christmas at my aunt's house, I had my niece on my lap and she was playing with the arm of the chair, which was made of strips of leather on a metal frame. The ends of the arms were looped to slide over the frame but were not secured, so it fell off after a while.

Early in development, as young infants grasp, suck, and manipulate objects, they learn something of the objects' affordances for action (Gibson, 1979). This is direct individual learning, and it may sometimes be supplemented by emulation learning in which the child discovers new affordances of objects by seeing them do thing she did not know they could do. But the tools and artifacts of a culture have another dimension -- what Cole (1996) calls the "ideal" dimension -- that produce another set of affordances for anyone with the appropriate kinds of social-cognitive and social learning skills. As human children observe other people using cultural tools and artifacts, they often engage in the process of imitative learning in which they attempt to place themselves in the "intentional space" of the user -- discerning the user's goal, what she is using the artifact "for." By engaging in this imitative learning, the child joins the other person in affirming what "we" use this object "for": we use hammers for hammering and pencils for writing. After she has engaged in such a process the child comes to see some cultural objects and artifacts as having, in addition to their natural sensory-motor affordances, another set of what we might call intentional affordances based on her understanding of the intentional relations that other persons have with that object or artifact -- that is, the intentional relations that other persons have to the world through that artifact (Tomasello, 1999a). -- Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, pp. 84-85

Maybe Tati's humor is not purely visual because one has to have the intentional affordances of artifacts in the back of one's mind to appreciate the (re)discovery of their natural affordances. Modernist design is good for contrasting these because form is based upon an idealized function.

there's a scene where a boy watches the slow disappearance of a ring of condensation from a wooden table where a hot cup has been standing. It's something I'd seen in life, but never in a film. Very simple, very real, rather microscopic, pretty 'undramatic'. And yet a very powerful, poetic, emotive symbol of ghostly disappearance.

Symbolic representation is supposed to be built upon sensorimotor representation, but I suppose a lot of culturally coded representation gets in the way of (or preempts) individual discovery. I wonder how obvious this stuff is. On the one hand it has to be coded; on the other, it has to be discovered.

Oh, I didn't care for M. Hulot's Holiday, I thought this was vastly better. Maybe just seeing it on a big screen in a beautifully crisp print versus a kind of muddy VHS version, but still.

-- n.a. (nu...) (webmail), August 28th, 2004 9:24 PM. (Nick A.) (later) (link)

it's almost exhausting, your eyes and ears (

it's almost exhausting, your eyes and ears do so much work just to keep up with what's going on. the "ears" part is vital--this movie owes something to silent film but is emphatically NOT a silent film--the soundtrack is utterly phenomenal.

i'm gonna see this tomorrow.

the poor guy stuck outside, the guy who keeps primping himself, the cackling elderly guy, or the lost-looking nerdy guy?

god this movie is good.

anyone want to see it again this week? i might try to see it a few times before it goes. it'll probably be a few decades before i get another chance.

next time i'm sitting real close to the screen.

heh maybe i'll go tonight! i need to figure out my plans this week.

i'm talking about the guard who lets hulot into the glass lobby of course. i like how he keeps carefully placing his cigarette back in the ashtray, taking it out for one drag, then putting it back.

am i the only one to have observed the "twin peaks" connection?

xpost

whenever i pass by one of those big lofts with the shades pulled up i think of that scene.

i like how the "middle-aged guy striptease" motif is reprised later in the restaurant (the guy on stage).

one thing i noticed that i hadn't noticed before: just how many people in the long shots are actually cardboard cutouts. and how, once you notice them, you start looking out for cardboard cutouts. and how tati fucks with you by having real people stand stock still like cardboard cutouts, only to move and frustrate you once you think you've identified them.

this movie's title is so apt.

he's like a walking autechre track! well, a sitting autechre track.

how about when the window-washer tilts the window in which the bus is reflected, and the passengers bob like the bus is being lifted and let down repeatedly. (there's also a split-second where something passes by the bus and all the passengers' heads whip around. blink and you miss it.)

http://www.emporis.com/en/il/im/?id=151302

I'd be down for seeing it sometime this weekend -- during the day would be better, I think.

fuck.

does it really take 2 1/2 hours from where you are?

god, i want to see this in the theater so bad, but 5 hours of driving isnt that pleasant

maybe you can come up here for the weekend and catch it?

i feel that tomorrow is my last hope

you cant always see playtime in 70mm.

i agree with most that has been said. the waiter who constantly primped himself was absolutely classic.

and the loud american, so spot on.

that whole restaurant scene was so complex and great. this film seemed more like real life (people always doing stuff in the background).

pithy.

btw i'm buying this soon:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000065CGB.08.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

(2) tati DOUBLE FEATURE at the wilmette this week!

!!!

I would just like to categorically state that my first born child will be called jacques tati. he can be friends with your harry dean stanton.

I wish there was a cinema tht played 'play time' every day.

i love this movie so much.

pictures

senses of cinema

http://www.cinaff.com/affiches/mon%20oncle.jpg

Still no word yet from Criterion on a re-release.

http://movingimage.us/site/screenings/mainpage/rep_nights.html

if you do, give a shout! figuratively speaking

true, but my favorite line has to be "c'est cod."

additionally there is a fabulous book in france (which is actually out of print i think) on the production of "playtime" (written by..stephane goudet maybe?) which deserves to be translated. he did another one on "jour de fete," concentrating on the preparation of the first true color version in the 1990s.

Seriously, though, the sound design in Tati's movies is just endlessly fascinating - i don't remember ever paying attention to sound in movies before Mon oncle

i mean

http://cyclo60.myouebe.net/CinemaTV/Mon_oncle_5.jpg

just rented this on spur of the moment. have seen no tati. will report back.

love love love it - no one uses sound the way tati does

impossible to imagine any film even remotely like this getting made today

have maybe never laughed so hard at anything as at the old doorman with his electronic buzzers

the restaurant/party scene goes on way too long though

the restaurant/party scene goes on way too long though

Whoa.

Do you think it's too boring? Too didactic? I can't imagine the film without that scene's ecstatic peak.

I have a poster for this movie above my bed. :)

I watch this movie whenever I feel like I'm forgetting where I am or how to react to the city properly.

it's fatiguing trying to keep up with all the details in the party scene once dinner has degenerated; it's just overload for me. there's a curiously fine line between overexcitement and boredom.

You don't have that problem with the other scenes? So much of the fun of the film, for me anyway, is figuring out how to divide your attention; there's no way to keep up with every line of action in a single viewing. This is certainly most apparent in the dinner scene, but it seems like you would already had to have sunk into the movie's rhythm.

I don't think you need explain yourself further or anything--if the scene drags for, it drags for you; I just love the shit out of this movie and that sequence in particular.

i guess it is, in that way, a very realistic depiction of a party

beautiful beautiful movie -- i bought the dvd in the tower blowout and have been in the mood to watch it again.

This film is best watched without subtitles, so you don't get distracted from the action. No-one says anything really anyway.

there's a curiously fine line between overexcitement and boredom.

this was my problem with bourne ultimatum.

otm

Tati's CENTENNIAL is today!

Viva Jacques.

http://www.tativille.com/

M. White to thread.

Ha! I was just thinking that I wanted to see this again last week.

I was just summoning you to correct Morbius's French.

merde!

i still haven't seen M. Hulot's holiday, or the even earlier one.

yesterday i saw someone buying Play Time in a music/DVD shop and it made me happy

See them both, Tracer!

I was just re-reading pieces of Michel Chion's Tati book. It's really great (and the only worthwhile book-length Tati study I've read--I don't read French very well though). Chion's writing is pretty loose and digressive, but he fusses over the right details and never feels unmoored from the films he writes about.

Chion rules - and he LOVES Tati to bits

i just saw "A man condemned to death has escaped" by Bresson last night and hoo I bet Chion absolutely drools over that movie - the sound in it really is the hero, even if is necessarily formally subjugated etc. etc.

I hate Tati, the last thing Chaplin needed to be was French.

You might yet come around.

(Great film, echoing pretty much all the praise above. Watched it last night while recovering from a day of feeling very under the weather and it improved my mood immeasurably.)

I wasn't too keen on the first two Hulot movies (the 2nd is just painful) but this movie's great.

I'm rewatching it -- or rather, relistening to it. Having it on in the background as a sonic piece is...hard to find the words, exactly, it's not quite like anything else.

His follow-up film, Trafic, is out on Criterion today; though it's not as mammoth and ambitious as Playtime it's clearly of a piece with it in its visual strategies, and one of the best don't-laugh-much comedies imaginable.

http://notebook.theauteurs.com/?p=213

never did watch this! it's showing at a local theater here in december. should i wait til then to see it, or will i appreciate it more if i see it before then?

Have your first viewing be a big screen. I think it'll knock your socks off.

going to see it in an hour! will report back.

love lvoe love love LOVE LVOIE LOVE LVOE

What he said.

the party in this movie - which takes up the 2nd half - is my favorite movie-party ever

http://peoplethings.com/andblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/pipandco_playtime_08052501.jpg

i have trafic sitting here but am waiting for a better tv

I finally completed the Hulot cycle (going backwards) about 6 weeks ago. Playtime is the best and actually plays pretty well at home since you keep re-playing bits over and over again. Although, having first seen it in a theatre, you do miss the sheer enormity of some of the shots and set-ups.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare4/playtime/16.52-r2.JPG

http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/original/1109playtime.jpg

Is it just me, ore did Tati recycle big chunks of Mon oncle to better effect in both Playtime and Trafic. Not that the original is bad, but watching it after the latter pair gave me some serious deja vu.

http://www.spaceandculture.org/uploaded_images/apartments-725281.jpg

http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/program/porady/1176018486/foto/04.jpg

The only Tati I can stand.

it kind of tried my patience sometimes but i can't say i was ever bored. wonderful wonderful film.

favorite bits:

— woman admires the eiffel tower in the reflection in the door
— woman doing this really hilarious "groove is in the heart" style dance into the party, right after (i think) the neon sign leads the drunk into the building
— hulot holding up the door handle (i think i laughed harder at this than i've laughed at any scene in a movie in years)
— the last two shots

i don't know if i've ever left a movie theater feeling so giddy and uplifted without quite knowing why.

blu-ray was invented for shit like this, or if it wasn't it should have been

the more i watch blake edwards's mid/late '60s stuff, the more i'm convinced he's the only hollywood director influenced by tati (before david lynch, i suppose, if you can consider lynch a hollywood director).

see: pink panther, shot in the dark, gunn, the party

hell even as late as victor/victoria there's a minor motif of understated anti-slapstick that reeks of tati

blake edwards is seriously underrated, i think

also claudia cardinale was seriously hot people

http://elescobillon.laopinion.es/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/claudia5.jpg

Interesting. It's about time I watched Shot In The Dark, etc with better eyes.

shot in the dark is funny as hell

also wtf blake edwards directed another pink panther movie with ROBERTO BENIGNI in 1993???

this is the time when i hijack the thread with images of claudia cardinale

http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/claudia-cardinale11.jpg
http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/sch/cn/v/v0/w465/158639_400_300.jpeg
http://claudiocaprara.ilcannocchiale.it/mediamanager/sys.user/38949/Claudia%20Cardinale%20a%20schiena%20nuda.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2414/2965640626_e8a14b88f1.jpg

I will yank it in solidarity, if you like.

(No I won't.)

hate this stuff.

Tati? Really?

yeah it makes me feel anxious and i find it totally unfunny.

:(

makes me feel anxious and i find it totally unfunny

^^^ ringing endorsement of tati's success at recreating modern life in microcosm

sort've agree abt them not being that funny - i mean, hulot is the v. definition of 'gentle' humour - but i actually find that relaxing, not anxiety-inducing - its almost ambient cinema, where nothing happens, or things happen in repeating patterns/cylces/colours/shapes, and you can let lost in the movement and construction wout worrying overly much abt plot, character or verbal nuance

wld love to live in the 'modern' house in mon oncle

I do find Playtime more transfixing and utterly absorbing than roll-on-the-floor funny. Still, you make me sad, jed.

^^ OTM. The spread-out tableau of Playtime is entrancing.

Especially Playtime really needs to be seen in a nice theater w/ a big BIG screen.

is Tati-LOl funny? He's DROLL, not funny.

I don't care for the Uncle movies though -- too "whimsical"

they're like Anthony Newley songs or something

I think it's true that Tati the actor, Tati as Hulot, is maybe not quite as Chaplinesque as he thinks he is - he doesn't have the same physical gifts - and for me at least there also lurks something a little sinister back there. I could totally believe stories about him bring a monster to his wife or whatever, if those stories existed. he's a man who feels he doesn't fit in the world.

I am REALLY looking forward to this new animated movie, the Illusionist, from the creator of Triplettes of Belleville. it's based on a script that Tati never filmed!

The Illusionist is out now, in the UK at least. I can see why it was never filmed, it's very melancholy and all the jokes are just a bit sad. Apparently it was a very personal story for him relating to a daughter he never knew. I mean it's great, but he let his curmudgeonly side show a bit too much.

I could totally believe stories about him bring a monster to his wife or whatever, if those stories existed.

this is an insane sentence!

they're like Anthony Newley songs or something

What kind of fool are you?

I do find Playtime more transfixing and utterly absorbing than roll-on-the-floor funny

Pretty much my thought.

What kind of fool are you?

Not fool enough to stand that kind of whimsy.

I don't see the similarity btwn Mon Oncle and "The Candy Man"

i find 'playtime' very funny, though not exactly in the way that most other movies are funny. it probably helps that i think chaplin is pretty much the pinnacle of all comedy ever.

i've never found anything remotely sinister about hulot -- the thought is a little bizarre.

Not Hulot - Tati as Hulot.

Maybe sinister's the wrong word - profound unhappiness. Coupled with monomania.

Nope, I see sinister subtexts too -- like Bill Cosby's Dr. Huxtable.

profound unhappiness.

http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/68/DeannaTroi.jpg

Who is that??

Star Trek Next Gen shrink.

I think. I'm strictly TOS myself.

I could easily be projecting other comics' famed private misanthropy onto Tati. For the record I have no idea about his actual self or life. But his innocence, as Hulot, seems less somehow less innocent than Chaplin's as The Tramp. It's more polemical. It'd innocence as intransigence against an ultra-sexualised society that shows every sign of worsening etc. I get the impression that he really passionately hates the sort of people who are the boy's parents in Mon Oncle, and hates the society that produced them, and feels they are so ridiculous as to be beyond hope.

Re: the Illusionist eek it's too bad to hear that you can see "why it was never made".. Still hoping for good things. But you know that Tati was completely bankrupted by Playtime. That may have played a bigger part. He hadn't been blessed with generous investors in many years.

Oh I definitely see that, I don't disagree. I was actually kind of drunk when I posted that @_@.

Re: the Illusionist eek it's too bad to hear that you can see "why it was never made".. Still hoping for good things.

Oh yeah it's great, maybe not as great as Belleville Rendezvous but still pretty amazing. It just wouldn't have been a commercial success if Tati had made it is what I meant, it's too bitter and downbeat.

Liked The Illusionist (Christmas in US limited release). As you can see 'Tatischeff' has the look, though only a few incidences of Hulotesque slapstick:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/images/stills-fullsize/theillusionist-8.jpg

just NY/LA to start.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/theillusionist/

Looks nice!

The 'lighting' of the scenes throughout is amazing.

Interesting coincidence re: this bump. Just was reading about how they'll be playing a 70mm print of this soon, and realized that this was that Jacques Tati movie I'd heard about and wanted to see but didn't remember the name of. Tickets will probably be expensive so it's probably not going to happen, but I'll be sure to take out the DVD at least.

really, it's SO much more impressive in a theatre

I should have mentioned by "this" I meant Playtime. Nevertheless, tickets to it are much less expensive than I thought. It's also playing from Dec. 23rd on, which is good because as a non-Christian Christmas is one of the great default movie-going days of the year anyways. And yeah, 70mm print, sweet.

critical roundup for The Illusionist (2nd half of the page):

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2684

rly want to see that

Fortuitous thread bump! Just saw Playtime for the first time (70mm print) just some hours ago. It was, good, I suppose.

a 70mm print is also running at reopening of NYC's Amer Mus of the Moving Image (in Astoria) next month.

trying to find London info about this :(

iMdB says it opened in the UK in August. (see Matt #2 above)

They're showing it here Feb. 4. I can't wait!

why Rosenbaum can't write about The Illusionist:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=24181

good lord I can't make it through that entire letter the grandson sent to ebert complaining about everything.

thing runs like 40 pages. "i have grievances and i wish to tell you about them in the form of this book which has so far failed to find a publisher." and i'm sorry, but ffs, this shit happened nearly 70 years ago. it's possible that the wound still stings, but grandson's obsession w/ this ancient wrong done to his mother, while understandable, doesn't interest me all that much.

exactly, no one needs to care outside of the family.

so no other Americans have seen this?

we keep putting it off. prolly this weekend...

i find it strange how uncurious/dismissive you guys are about the backstory linked above. maybe you just love this boring pretentious director too much to interface with his monstrous nature

good point u dick

Please, is name-calling necessary :'(

artist ppl like is kind of an asshole, film at 11

So nobody finds it interesting at all? I'm not saying he needs to be raked over the coals, just that it's an interesting story. I don't think anyone on here would claim that the details of Roman Polanski's life aren't worth knowing because, hey, artists are assholes - y'know?

Hey, it's Tati's birthday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_92Cm8gl7Ls&feature=share

With his films, I pretty much watch the backgrounds the whole time.

http://patrixurban.tumblr.com/post/27772525541/iznogoodgood-jacques-tati-marlon-brando-on

both doormen (the one with the buzzers and the one with the detached handle) kill me

the one with the buzzers = one of my favorite moments in the movies, ever.

funny thing is i was expecting a chekhov-style gun-firing what with the amount of time they lingered on the buzzers. but no - only once!

This was such an ordeal for me. Glad I saw it in a theatre--it would have taken me a week to get through it at home.

I would happily watch this film over and over for a week, oh for the spare time to accomplish this project

I know people love it--not trying to provoke anyone. I just didn't get it; didn't laugh once. I was prepared for what I knew would be a droll/whimsical tone, but even on that level, I didn't find it remotely funny. (I thought of a scene in The Graduate at one point, which was also '67: the part where Hoffman's left holding the door for half the wedding party. To me, that's much funnier than anything here.) And the Hulot character annoyed me intensely. I wasn't sure...of anything--who he was, why he was there, why he never talked (until all of a sudden, for no reason that I could tell, he did). I don't mean to be cruel, but I find Hoffman in Rain Man funnier. I got the doing-battle-with-modernity theme, and I guess that's kind of interesting, and I liked some of the cinematography, and found the main woman very attractive. But I won't be working backwards to the earlier films.

clears the decks for paul ryan interviews

(I thought of a scene in The Graduate at one point, which was also '67: the part where Hoffman's left holding the door for half the wedding party. To me, that's much funnier than anything here.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKY0FsUEMyw

If I like something, or don't like something, I try to explain why in a fairly straightforward manner. If either of you guys would care to do the same, like other people do upthread, that'd be great. Otherwise, I don't know how to respond.

I guess, as with Keaton, Tati is more about astonishment than laughter to me.

yeah, your post makes it sound like you came into it looking for "laffs"; recipe for disappointment imo

would kill to see this in the cinema :(

same! every few months i google it to see if theres a screening coming up, never any luck

to be fair there IS something strange and imo verging on creepy about hulot; he is someone who has wilfully stunted himself, refused to enter the world of adulthood (yet smokes a pipe!); he seems to want to inhabit the sort of character built by chaplin but doesn't have the weightlessness of chaplin, or the grace, which reinforces the overt message of a man out of sync with the world with another message: that he is even out of sync with himself, of the inevitability of adulthood.

clemenza i think often we like or don't like things based on their entry vectors into an existing grid of expectations. this movie in particular has been lionized to such an extent that i don't blame you at all for having a bit of an arms-folded, "ok, impress me" POV when you sat down to watch it. though i think few films can stand up to this sort of expectation, this one does particularly poorly by most metrics. it drags in the middle and at the end. for a "funny" movie it has precious few belly laughs. it is so completely its own animal. for me, one of the things i value about it is that it requires me to do work that ends up being pleasurable - work to clear my own preconceptions of what sorts of things movies should do, work to notice background details, work to pay attention to the soundtrack; but all this work may be dipped into and out of, a bit like a baseball game where you can just let your mind drift for awhile, taking in ancillary sights and sounds and only snapping focus onto the main action when the crowd yells.

If I like something, or don't like something, I try to explain why in a fairly straightforward manner.

Basic.

it's not the expectation of funniness that's the problem w/r/t tati and particularly this film. whether i sat down expecting to be impressed or expecting to laugh i'd just wind up, as i always do with him, as a tight little ball of anxiety expanding to pure hatred until the point where i just have to switch it off because it's no good for me. i wouldn't expect it to be funny but it's so completely the opposite of funny to me. if this is proof that it's working then fine but i'll keep it as far away from me as i can.

I also had a poor experience of Tati's supposed masterpiece.

I went to see Playtime after a long absence from my local multiplex, a six-screener. I was disconcerted, upon arrival, to find that the place had been subdivided even further. From the escalator I could see individual viewing cabins, open-topped, stretching to the horizon, all painted the same shade of grey. Each one was occupied by a single viewer watching a single film via a head-mounted audio-visual apparatus.

Wandering around the premises with my umbrella in hand and my hat and coat still on, I was able to observe a peculiar charade taking place. No sooner was a viewer led to a vacant cubicle by a grey-suited hostess (more like an air hostess than a cinema usherette) and fitted with a helmet than a second occupant was surreptitiously ushered in, a typist or junior clerk who sat at a desk beside the oblivious viewer, making telephone calls or typing. It would seem that the cinema business, in itself, was considered by the new Anglo-American management an insufficient source of revenue.

I was soon apprehended by one of the hostesses, who asked me what film I was here to see, then led me to my own cubicle, which was number 12,346. The air-conditioning in this unit was overwhelmingly loud, making the hostess' instructions to me completely inaudible. She had to demonstrate the use of seat-belt, tray table and visor in a kind of dumb-show, by the end of which I had changed my mind about the whole thing. I escaped while her head was buried in the helmet, pausing only to indicate the cubicle to the typist waiting outside.

I now became lost in the featureless warren of grey corridors, punctuated only by sleek security cameras which craned to follow my movements. Since the floor was slippery as ice, these became increasingly erratic, and I found myself slithering around, completely out of control. Yet no matter where I slithered, the security cameras craned their necks to watch, like a flock of storks choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

It was suddenly very silent in the multiplex, and I became conscious -- slumped on the ground -- of three sounds: the ticking of my watch, the beating of my heart, and the sound of the ripping skin of the banana I had produced from my inside pocket and now began to eat. These sounds were so loud that several booth doors opened and angry customers gesticulated at me, waving me away. I waved back in greeting, only to find strong metallic hands gripping my wrists.

A couple of apelike robots escorted me to the emergency fire exit and threw me out onto the helipad (so shiny I could see the Eiffel Tower reflected in it), where a jazz band was playing furiously, welcoming a VIP just then touching down in a helicopter.

"I came here to see some Jacques Tati," I mimed to the tuba player, who was playing a deafening series of farting noises, "but this place isn't what it used to be".

"But have you seen Playtime?" the brass-player mimed back over the din of the arriving helicopter. "It's a brilliant deconstruction of 20th century Taylorist rationality, juxtaposing the modernity of Max Weber's worst nightmares with 70mm vaudeville routines. Great sound design, too!"

The helicopter door opened and Charles de Gaulle himself popped his head out. "Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution," he mimed over the din. "We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry her to these times. Are you coming with me?"

I shook my head. "No, Monsieur le President," I mimed. "I'm going..." And I looked around and saw, amongst the cubic office blocks, a windmill. "I'm going to that windmill. That's my France!"

"That's the Moulin Rouge," smiled de Gaulle. "That's where I'm going too. Hop in!"

A+

Tracer Hand: appreciate that you took the time to explain why you love this.

As I say, I had a pretty good idea of what the film's tone would be; I really didn't go into it expecting to laugh out loud (which I don't do all that often at films anyway). The humour in Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy operates in the same general sphere, and that I love. I'm not always laughing, but I smile from start to finish--in astonishment, if you will, at how perfect it is. The expectations were there a bit, and that is a problem, but really only as a result of its high finish in the recent S&S poll--I'd been skipping Tati films for 30 years, based upon, as I said in another thread, the sense that he wasn't for me. So unlike other films, I hadn't been waiting forever to see it; more like piqued interest for about two months.

There were 10,000 little bits of business in this. I wasn't astonished, just worn out. I don't know if that requires much analysis beyond the most basic truism of all: humour is a very subjective thing.

well again, i'd say as "humour" it will fail you, there's a huge sadness to it as well. a sadness that verges on condescending at times.

grampsy!! that is tremendous!!!!!

are you Boris Vian????

The sadness didn't come across for me; not in the way that is always does with Chaplin and Keaton. I don't know about putting humour off to the side, though...if you do, it seems like you're left with an extremely elaborate contraption in the service of a rather basic theme. I thought the main appeal of Play Time--besides its back story, which I find interesting but irrelevant to my own experience of the film--was that it treated the idea of grappling with modernity in a humorous way, thus avoiding the trap of pretension that other films addressing the same theme can fall into.

I would repeat the truism (likely quoted above -- Rosenbaum?) that yr experience of this film will be different if you sit elsewhere in the theater.

The first thing I'd do is move away from the couple to my left, who periodically talked, and away from the guy behind me, who laughed at everything for the first third (but not as much after that). I don't think so, though. One day, down the road a few years, I may try it again at home, keeping in mind that the humour is secondary.

the humour is secondary

It's not, really, despite what the movie's fans try to desperately tell non-converts.

Anyway, snark aside, I wasn't taking exception to your dismissal of the movie as much as I was poking fun at your comparing it unfavorably to The Graduate, of all things. Self-parody?

hmm yeah i'm not saying the humor is secondary, but that i don't think you have to share tati's sense of humor to like the movie. not explaining this well, i realize.

Well, I was comparing it unfavorably to one specific scene, Hoffman standing there holding open the door as one person after another files through, that was very similar in tone to the Tati film (and even similar to very specific scenes, like the woman being interrupted by one person after another as she tries to take the picture at the flower stand). Seemed like a very apt comparison. (xpost)

This is one film I p much will not watch at home.

There seem to me to be lots of affinities between Play Time and The Graduate, especially in the dopey impassivity of their central characters, further underscored by the coincidence of them being released in the same year. I was curious if a search would turn up anything; not much that I can see, other than lots of people putting them both on ten bests for that year, but I found this 1968 review:

http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/16th-august-1968/6/1----freda-bruce-lockhart-ta-fillip-from-two-smart

I can relate to clemenza's reaction -- I started this a few months ago and turned it off about 1/3 through.

's OK. I won't harp on it anymore. That you can only see all other movies through the lens of American filmmaking c. 1967-1977 is well documented.

That Grampsy post! holy smokes!

playtime is probably all-time top 10 for me

That's my frame of reference, yes--why that seems so odd to you is beyond me. Most people, I think have one--a frame of reference, that is. That I "can only see" things through that window makes about as much sense as me saying you judge everything against Showgirls.

The difference is if you said that, it would be untrue.

Jeez...easy there, Killer.

Hulot is not even of the same species of character as Ben Braddock.

I tend to focus on similarities where other people focus on differences. I talked about this on another thread--I think that's just a difference in how you see things. (I.e., I'm aware of obvious differences between the characters, but I also see points of similarity.)

jesus he compared it to ONE SCENE in a movie that is playtime's contemporary

You're right, clemenza has never before out of the blue brought some mid-period Bob Rafelson movie into some random horror movie conversation, or speculated about whether Mean Streets counts as a musical.

Reductio ad absurdum, right? Or, as you would have it, untrue, at least as applied to those two examples. I did bring up Taxi Driver in both the horror and comedy polls, and I don't think that's particularly outlandish--it's that kind of film.

it's interesting that you had similar responses to this film and to 'l'avventura,' clemenza, because i think of them as being very similar films. they're both films i love to look at, that take me out of myself, and that move at a pace that i wouldn't typically enjoy in a movie. they're both basically visual -- not narrative -- experiences, and thus are pretty much automatically going to hit you as 'boring' if you go into the theater expecting anything but. i think of them both as being deeply mysterious films, but where 'l'avventura' sort of demands that you fill in the blanks yourself, 'playtime' is a completely self-contained object, like a faberge egg or a joseph cornell box. it's there for you to look at and enjoy. maybe there are people who find it hilariously funny, but i usually just smile through most of it. i like a thousand films with real stories and real characters, but 'playtime' reminds me that the real world is more mysterious, fascinating, and hilarious than any movie.

i'm working on how to explain why this is one of my favourite films. it's simply unlike anything else. i can't even deal with any of tati's other stuff. but this one is special... almost a whole other kind of movie, one without protagonists or dialogue as we know it... it's a film about the crowd, about groups of people. and the way time passes in it, from day to evening to night to dawn, is just sublime.

i can't even deal with any of tati's other stuff. but this one is special.

^^^ this

I dunno. I thought Parade had its fair share of graceful moments.

c'mon the pail in the water, in hulot's holiday!! i still don't know how he did it! one of his few successful purely chaplinesque moments imo

Nice posts, J.D. and slocki. Irrationally, you do make me want to try again soon.

There are many films I love that, in broad outline (and at least to my eyes), fit your descriptions of Play Time. I’m not at all averse to slow and contemplative, especially as I get older--when I was 20, different story. I like L’eclisse, was very attentive through Satantango recently, so on and so forth. And as I watched Play Time, I always felt like I was aware of the effects and the little touches that I was supposed to be responding to. I simply didn’t. I’m just going to put it down to being one of those unusual films that some will connect with and some won’t. It sounds like jed and WmC had experiences similar to mine.

it's a film about the crowd, about groups of people. and the way time passes in it, from day to evening to night to dawn, is just sublime.

yes, this is how i relate to play time, as a beautiful exercise in obsessive patterning and yes, linked to antonioni in the way that both he, and the tati of play time, are much more interested in the images/sensations that happen when you juxtapose bodies and buildings, than in the psychological 'depth' of their characters. at one level, play time is sublimely relaxing, like watching the tide going in and out - until you think abt the monomania of the creator behind it, abt the way such regulated perfectionism is just another word for...

as for his other films, i want to live in the modernist house in mon oncle, and adore the way that the richly colourful cinematography captures the topography of post-war paris - would be sweet to see these films MAPPED, literally.

i tend to have a rather romantic attachment to films where groups of people stay up all night, and playtime does this in such a wonderful and different way

it's a film about the crowd, about groups of people. and the way time passes in it, from day to evening to night to dawn, is just sublime.

Priceless

r u mocking me

Nope. Completely sincere. Playtime's up there with His Girl Friday and, I dunno, The Red Shoes for me.

good good (ps i couldnt reply to the web thingy)

http://issuu.com/interiorsjournal/docs/interiors0912

having issuus w/their format, ugh

would kill to see this in the cinema :(

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 3 September 2012 07:58 (3 months ago) Permalink

they played this on sunday at the white cube in bermondsey but i missed it :(

shows again in NYC end of month

...hence I'm seeing in an hour

70mm?

yup

Walking the streets around Lincoln Center afterward -- tourists taking pictures, pedestrians crossing in front of buses, everybody seemed to have stepped out of the film. This happens every time; the movie turns urban life into Tativille.

yep -- that's why it's so magical. one of the few movies that seems to merit the word.

great Momus posts up there in 2003 btw.

i always thought it impossibly sad that old people don't fit in the future;

― cozen¡ (Cozen), Tuesday, December 30, 2003 2:19 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

need to give this line its props 8 years after it was written

the Self-Styled Siren saw Playtime in December with her mom, and links to a Brit journalist who worked on the English dialogue (and gags) before Art Buchwald:

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2013/01/what-i-watched-with-my-mother-good-ones.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/jul/23/features.peterlennon

Bought Play Time (on Blu-Ray) late last year on the strength of this fine thread, having never been attracted to it before and it's amazing (of course)

man i feel like watching this again in a theater. why can't there be a theater in every town that just shows this every year.

otm

tati had wanted a theater in paris that would show this every day forever

that would wear a lot of pricey 70mm prints

this movie really doesn't make much sense on a small screen; wonder if it's ever had any TV broadcasts?

when i created this thread ten years ago this film seemed like an obscurity with a small but fervent cult, but it seems to be everywhere now! made a strong showing in 2012 sight& sound poll, and is a criterion/BFI best-seller.

it's been on UK TV several times.

played recently at the bfi nice to see it on the big screen finally

i keep wanting to buy the dvd but yeah, feels like it'd be kind of pointless.

it works pretty awesome on my decent-sized flatscreen via criterion bluray

but yes am eager to see it in the theatre!

http://www.firstshowing.net/2014/watch-jacques-tatis-masterpiece-playtime-4k-restoration-trailer/

already got tickets

I liked this from Momus upthread: "As so often happens, it's satire which most permanently commemorates the things it's supposedly undermining."

tati liked modernity

Not sure as to the point of the 'reissue'. It looked really great when I saw it on New Year's day.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/24/jacques-tati-playtime-intensely-complex-life-affirming-comedy

Criterion box out Tuesday.

yeah if the film is satire it's fairly affectionate satire

saw this on 70mm... three times. once with n/a IIRC (but i may not RC). hope i get another chance some day.

c'mon the squeaky chairs, the incomprehensible doorbell/notification system in the office building, the crazed boxy efficiency of the workplace, the city apartments all the same.. i agree there's a tenderness there, but you can tell that he thinks it's all a bit much and would be far more contended with a pipe and a newspaper in a little shack on the outskirts of town

Not really, no.

The way he meets/runs into the girl at various points shows an attitude of the city as place of possibility, everything else is an annoyance that is tolerated, that you could extract humour from.

I think you're right! But I think once he met the girl he'd like it if she came back to his shack.

I mean, I dunno. It's not either/or is all I mean. But I certainly think of Playtime as partly a satire of modernism.

And what I like about the Momus quote is that it encapsulates this ambiguity - Playtime is both love letter to and a deft skewering of modernism.

Really thought it was on the side of commemoration. Felt - through the sound design, the shiny look of its surfaces - that its all good in some way, even if it often doesn't work half of the time, or you get lost in the midst of it, but even when you get lost you can find the girl. The restaurant breaks down, but what a party that was! etc. In fact it was an improvement.

It might make it a richer work to say its ambiguous, that there are shades of grey, but it doesn't detract at all from it.

Certainly something I need to see again - spent half of its time trying to work out some of the jokes.

It doesn't detract from Playtime to say it doesn't do much ambiguity, is what I meant.

Found the satiric aspect well, not too unnerving. I often don't know what I expect when I'm told a work contains satire so don't mind me.

Yeah there was some debate how Tati perhaps being too much of a traditionalist but Mon Oncle and Playtime have enough warmth for me to think otherwise.

Playtime is perhaps my favorite movie of all time, actually.

all those shots of "real" paris reflected in the windows sort of tip his hand

there's no question that he's not a fan of la defense and that whole international style of modernist architecture.

i'd agree it has satirical elements, it's just that the satire is hardly savage. tati is mostly amused by the possibilities of wreaking havoc in the context of a style meant to imply an almost inhuman orderliness and tidiness.

that said, as (i think) momus points out much above, the glass skyscrapers of playtime look rather gorgeous don't they!

btw what ever happened to momus? is he off trolling some other message board? what world center of culture is he living in these days? i'd be amused to find out that momus had married a paralegal and moved to dubuque.

Criterion box out Tuesday.

― Don A Henley And Get Over It (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, October 25, 2014 1:03 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just an FYI:

Word on the street is that the Barnes & Noble 50% off sale will be starting on November 11th. I'm holding out until then to get my copy.

i, too, got word of that barnes and noble sale via my local street hustlers. they also told me something about your mother, but i forgot the details, sorry.

Hey, I'm not a shill.

I thought it would helpful info. I did word it very shill-like I'll give you that.

Though I'm a Tati newb so once I actually watch the films I'll be happy to talk about them.

oh, i was just being silly -- i wasn't criticizing you!

i hope you enjoy the box set. i would recommending starting with mr hulot's holiday. :)

OK! Wasn't sure...

And thanks! Should I not just plow through in chronological order?

is hulot's holiday the one with the incredible scene of him painting a boat, and his paint bucket's in the water, and he's focusing on his painting so hard that he doesn't notice the bucket's floating all the way around the boat, and every time he needs more paint he blindly puts his brush down where he imagines the bucket should be, and somehow - impossibly - the bucket has floated around to the exact spot where he's put his brush down?

yes that's the one and i do love that scene

evan: do whatever you want! but hulot's holiday might be the most immediately charming and probably the first thoroughgoing instance of what we think of as tati's distinctive visual humor

but hey, jour de fete is pretty good too!

Great! I am very excited to jump in.

i still have no fucking idea how they did that. wires under the water, i guess. it still looks just impossible.

yeah i think you can see a rope pulling the bucket. it's still quite impressive, isn't it?

perhaps my favorite gag in mr hulot's holiday works in a similar fashion. when the vendor isn't looking, his rope of taffy starts sagging until you're sure that it'll fall to the ground, but he always seems to turn around pull it back up just in time.

i want to watch this movie right now

https://dzqhtr5vz0h46.cloudfront.net/keyframe/media/2014/10/tati1028.jpg

Saw a copy of this lovely new poster in the lobby of the Glasgow Film Theatre last night:

http://www.liveforfilms.com/2014/09/29/jacques-tatis-playtime-gets-a-4k-restoration/

the quotes sort of ruin it :(

yeah it should just be the title of the film, with all the other stuff below the image :(

if i win the lottery i'll just buy a theater, a 70mm print of this film, and some 70mm projection equipment and just watch this every sunday for the rest of my life.

you are all invited to this hypothetical weekly gathering btw

record of home team in WS Game 7 (all-time: 19-16)

1982-present: 9-0
1962-1979: 2-7
1945-1960: 3-6
1909-1940: 5-3

There was no 5-4 WS under the 5-of-9 format.

I can't think of any reason for the results to shift in the Modern Era, so I'm just going to call it RANDOM.

oh well, wrong thread!

Penance: Peter Cowie on meeting Tati.

I asked him how he managed to capture the characteristics of a human being in a few deft strokes. At this, he unfurled those endless legs, stood erect at six feet three inches, and drew me to a large circular window that overlooked the street. “Look,” he ordered, and I looked, seeing a steady flow of people on their way home after the day’s work. “Now, see him,” he gestured, and I saw a man with a porkpie hat swinging his briefcase with aplomb. Tati then explained how he picked such figures from the crowd (“I don’t want actors you can recognize in life”), and then magnified their mannerisms so as both to amuse his audience and reveal a personality. “I can wait on the corner down there for two hours,” he said, “until comedy comes along.”

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3343-flashback-jacques-tati

that reminds me of a jean-luc godard introduction to an interview w/ tati (from cahiers du cinema) in which he says that in tati even someone just opening a window can be funny. the democratization of humor, etc.

i do think that when i watch his films my sense of the world is temporarily transformed. walking home after seeing playtime or mr hulot's h oliday can be quite an experience as i'm often attuned to the strangeness (and thus the humor) of the everyday.

'tis true, I always approach glass doors self-consciously now no matter when I've last seen Play Time.

not many filmmakers have that kind of power, imo. dreyer is another one, though obviously for different reasons.

in case you didn't notice the J.Ro piece on sound & image at Criterion:

Tati’s highly original approach to dialogue, more often overheard than heard in any conventional manner, has been best described by the great André Bazin (quoted here in Timothy Barnard’s translation):

It has sometimes been mistakenly said that [Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday’s] soundtrack is made up of a kind of magma of sound on which snatches of sentences float, some of whose words are distinct while just as many others are nonsensical. This is nothing more than the impression of an inattentive ear. In fact, the film’s soundtrack is rarely indistinct, except for the loudspeakers on the train platform—but then this gag is realistic. On the contrary, all of Tati’s artfulness consists in destroying clarity with clarity. The dialogues are not at all incomprehensible; rather, they are insignificant, and their insignificance is revealed by this very clarity. Tati achieves this by deforming the intensity of the various levels of sound, sometimes going so far as to maintain the sound of an offscreen action over a scene shot silent. For the most part, his sound decor is made up of realistic elements: bits of conversations, cries, various kinds of remarks. None, however, is strictly located in a dramatic situation. In relation to this background noise, sudden noises take on an entirely false prominence.

Bazin goes on to give as an example of this the exaggerated offscreen sound of Monsieur Hulot playing Ping-Pong, which disrupts the hotel guests’ quieter activities in the evening. One of the most telling phrases here, offering an important clue to what makes Tati so distinctive, is “sound decor.” We usually think of decor as something designed and built rather than as a “found” element, but in Tati it’s usually both. The fact that Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday was mainly shot at an actual seaside resort shouldn’t mislead one into thinking that it wasn’t partially designed and built as well. The facades of both the Hôtel de la Plage and the house where the character Martine stays are constructed sets, and the paradoxical reason for this was to make the film more “realistic.” The Hôtel de la Plage was a real hotel, and Tati insisted on shooting much of his film there while it went about its normal operations. But in order to do this without interfering too much with those operations, a fake front where he could shoot many scenes also had to be built. In short, even the manufactured decor in Tati’s world is meant to be observed and discovered rather than simply noticed.

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3337-jacques-tati-composing-in-sound-and-image

that's a nice analysis. rosenbaum comes through some times (though i wonder if that essay, or parts of it, dates to an earlier period).

Either way, probably. He has a tendency these days to repeat himself. (As does virtually anyone in the trade.)

he's not in the trade anymore, though--he's retired.

Right. Retired people never repeat themselves.

I have to admit nearly all the retired people I know are dead.

also i saw J.Ro talk about doing hallucinogenics with Hou hsiao-Hsien a few weeks ago, so that was new to me.

wait... he and hou hsiao-hsien were talking about doing hallucinogens?

or he was talking about taking drugs with hhh?

Moving Places almost fetishizes the experience of seeing movies under the influence.

Stevie D and I saw a 35mm print of the Tati-produced Eng-lang cut of Mon Oncle tonight. Boxed set notwithstanding, nothing beats the detail in those deep, populated frames of his in 35 (or 70).

he was talking about taking drugs with hhh?

^this

yeah tati on the big screen is crucial. it's just funnier that way!

audio interview by Studs Terkel, 1962

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJNtMo1xrE

Saw this at the GFT in Glasgow tonight, right at the front. Still reeling from the restaurant scene which I enjoyed and endured in equal measure, just like the best il parties. In love with the girl who danced awesomely throughout.

yeah the restaurant scene is exhausting! in the best way imo.

Just how it grows and grows organically then goes on and on and stumbles out into the daylight and on to the drugstore (/afterparty) gave me the jitters.

I felt a bit battered by that point, working in a restaurant prob doesn't help, but the ending left me uplifted.

man, this new blu-ray of playtime is something else. i don't think i've seen a home video this sharp. it's no 70mm, but it'll do.

i often wonder how the hell he directed this film (the obvious answer: very, very carefully). i mean, in the latter part of the restaurant sequence, every person dancing has a really distinctive and often very funny style of movement. did tati work that all out in advance, or with the actors on the set, or did he allow them to figure it out themselves? i also have no idea how they did some of the stuff with reflections. just the logistics of that! it's hard to think of a film that better illustrates the importance to film of the monocular perspective of the camera. move the camera one inch to the right or left in almost any given shot and the comic effect is destroyed.

and the density of the gags! in any given shot, three gag motifs will resolve themselves, another three will develop, and a bunch more will be introduced -- often in concert with one another. just plotting that all out must have been an incredible effort, much less filming it.

Often those gags get in the way of one another, cancelling and frustrating - like some anti-comic strategy.

Tbh a lot of the time I felt like I was catching all the set ups but missing all the pay offs.

From the little info I have Tati was fighting against his persona so anti-comic might have been an aim by that point.

The restaurant scene really works. All of that tied together makes it a really unique experience, which I can't see being that satisfying on DVD.

i love mr hulot's car in mr hulot's holiday, as rubbery and precarious as any classic rickety cartoon car

omg I just started watching this last night and I felt like a child. When else has an artistic work been so deeply, breathtakingly beautiful and also so clever and funny at the same time? It has an effervescent magic to it that I just could not even comprehend. It also made me want to watch nothing but Tati and Greenaway and maybe Carax for the rest of my life.

And the sound editing, my god!

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

Tati on Mubi now

https://mubi.com/en/gb/collections/jacques-tati-tr

That's excellent though Playtime on the big screen is unbeatable

...Holiday was on tv yesterday (probably TPTV as they showed it last year)