Playtime (U.)
Directed by Jacques Tati.
Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Denneck, Billy Kearns, Georges Montant and Georges Fayes. French with subtitles. 122 mins. Part of The NFT's Tati season.
There is something very French about Jacques Tati: he was a physical comedian who didn’t want to get his hands dirty or lose his dignity. Just like Godard and the Nouvelle Vague, Tati adopted the tropes and traditions of mainstream US entertainment – in Tati's case the silent comedians – and took the fun out of them. Playtime is both his masterpiece and folly, a comedy classic that is initially sparing, almost resentful, with the laughs but builds towards something that resembles refined hilarity.
Playtime hammers away at Tati's favourite themes, the alienating effects of technology and the uniformity of urban existence. It opens in an antiseptic, almost colourless airport and “slow to get going” doesn't begin to cover it. In the opening minutes it seems almost to be hanging around waiting for something to happen. Eventually, after a few false starts, we alight on the figure of Monsieur Hulot and his frustrated attempts to make it through a series of cold, spotless, modern offices and shopping spaces.
Hulot had one of the most distinctive silhouettes in world cinema – the hat, the raincoat, the pipe, the jerky movements and his inquisitive, inquiring look are immediately recognisable. He isn't an agent of chaos like most slapstick figures, nor is he a total idiot. Rather he is politely curious about everyone and everything, yet totally unaware and always at a remove from the rest of society. Hulot pops in and out of the film, like Prince Charles wandering around lost on the set of Antonioni's Red Desert.
The scope of the invention and the boldness of the visual storytelling is quite unsurpassed. This is very definitley cinema – you'd have to be a pretty skilled film maker even to dream of working at this level. The avoidance of any kind of narrative means it often seems rambling and aimless, but not a moment is wasted. Similarly you sense that nothing that appears in the frame hasn't mad eit there after lots of careful consideration. The film is so tightly controlled it can seem a little oppressive. Tati makes his points about modern life being rubbish and then he makes them again and again. It is all wonderfully done, but a little stifling.
The film's great beauty is that in the second half humanity begins to break free of its shackles. Instead of always turning at right angles, the characters begin to move in circles. There is an incredibly long, maybe 45-minute, sequence in a nightclub and as people begin to loosen up, this priggish film gradually becomes totally carefree and hilarious. It makes the rather English point that people are generally a bit better when they've got a few drinks inside them.
Jacques Tati boxset review.
Directed by Jacques Tati.
Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Denneck, Billy Kearns, Georges Montant and Georges Fayes. French with subtitles. 122 mins. Part of The NFT's Tati season.
There is something very French about Jacques Tati: he was a physical comedian who didn’t want to get his hands dirty or lose his dignity. Just like Godard and the Nouvelle Vague, Tati adopted the tropes and traditions of mainstream US entertainment – in Tati's case the silent comedians – and took the fun out of them. Playtime is both his masterpiece and folly, a comedy classic that is initially sparing, almost resentful, with the laughs but builds towards something that resembles refined hilarity.
Playtime hammers away at Tati's favourite themes, the alienating effects of technology and the uniformity of urban existence. It opens in an antiseptic, almost colourless airport and “slow to get going” doesn't begin to cover it. In the opening minutes it seems almost to be hanging around waiting for something to happen. Eventually, after a few false starts, we alight on the figure of Monsieur Hulot and his frustrated attempts to make it through a series of cold, spotless, modern offices and shopping spaces.
Hulot had one of the most distinctive silhouettes in world cinema – the hat, the raincoat, the pipe, the jerky movements and his inquisitive, inquiring look are immediately recognisable. He isn't an agent of chaos like most slapstick figures, nor is he a total idiot. Rather he is politely curious about everyone and everything, yet totally unaware and always at a remove from the rest of society. Hulot pops in and out of the film, like Prince Charles wandering around lost on the set of Antonioni's Red Desert.
The scope of the invention and the boldness of the visual storytelling is quite unsurpassed. This is very definitley cinema – you'd have to be a pretty skilled film maker even to dream of working at this level. The avoidance of any kind of narrative means it often seems rambling and aimless, but not a moment is wasted. Similarly you sense that nothing that appears in the frame hasn't mad eit there after lots of careful consideration. The film is so tightly controlled it can seem a little oppressive. Tati makes his points about modern life being rubbish and then he makes them again and again. It is all wonderfully done, but a little stifling.
The film's great beauty is that in the second half humanity begins to break free of its shackles. Instead of always turning at right angles, the characters begin to move in circles. There is an incredibly long, maybe 45-minute, sequence in a nightclub and as people begin to loosen up, this priggish film gradually becomes totally carefree and hilarious. It makes the rather English point that people are generally a bit better when they've got a few drinks inside them.
Jacques Tati boxset review.
