This week we revisit a classic, a masterpiece by Jacques Tati. In the movie, Tati depicts modernism's problematic impact on the city and the way in which people interact within it.
The movie's carefully considered environment shows characteristics of the modernist movement at that time: repetition and regularity (the result of industrialisation) are represented from the smallest objects in the interiors to the larger scale of the city's urban plan. Enjoy this great movie and let us know your thoughts about Tati's take on modernism.
MAIN INFO
Original title: Play Time
Year: 1967
Runtime: 155 min.
Country: France
Director: Jacques Tati
Writer: Art Buchwald, Jacques Lagrange, Jacques Tati
Soundtrack: Francis Lemarque
Cast: Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek
PLOT
The movie is structured in six sequences, linked by two characters who repeatedly encounter one another in the course of a day: Barbara, a young American tourist visiting Paris with a group composed primarily of middle-aged American women, and Monsieur Hulot, a befuddled Frenchman lost in the new modernity of Paris. The sequences are as follows:
The Airport: the American tour group arrives at the ultra-modern and impersonal Orly Airport.
The Offices: M. Hulot arrives at one of the glass and steel buildings for an important meeting, but gets lost in a maze of disguised rooms and offices, eventually stumbling into a trade exhibition of lookalike business office designs and furniture nearly identical to those in the rest of the building.
The Trade Exhibition: M. Hulot and the American tourists are introduced to the latest modern gadgets, including a door that slams "in golden silence" and a broom with headlights, while the Paris of legend goes all but unnoticed save for a flower-seller's stall and a single reflection of the Eiffel Tower in a glass window.
The Apartments: as night falls, M. Hulot meets an old friend who invites him to his sparsely furnished, ultra-modern and glass-fronted flat. This sequence is filmed entirely from the street, observing Hulot and other building residents through uncurtained floor-to-ceiling picture windows.
The Royal Garden: This sequence takes up almost the entire second half of the film. At the restaurant, Hulot reunites with several characters he has periodically encountered during the day, along with a few new ones, including a nostalgic ballad singer and a boisterous American businessman.
The Carousel of Cars: Hulot buys Barbara two small gifts as mementos of Paris before her departure. In the midst of a complex ballet of cars in a traffic circle, the tourists' bus returns to the airport.
TRAILER
Previously posted on this section…
- The Belly of an Architect
- Blade Runner
- Gattaca
- Metropolis
- My Architect
- Lost In Translation
- The International
- Equilibrium
- THX 1138
- Æon Flux
- Rear Window
- Koyaanisqatsi
- My Uncle
- Manufatured Landscapes
- The Architect
- Dark City
- The Fountainhead
- Baraka
- Brazil
- Cube
- The Lake House
- The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
- Click
- The Fountain
- The Shining
- The Truman Show
- Paris, I Love You
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- Life is a Breath of Air
- Batman
- Contempt
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Inception
- In Bruges
- The Cell
- North by Northwest
- The Fifth Element
- Underground
- Cloud Atlas
- Old Boy
- 24 City
- Dogville
- The Fall
