Jacques Tati/Play Time

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On the ocassion of my selling my Criterion DVD of Play Time on eBay, in advance of a forthcoming deluxe R2 release, featuring the restoration that premiered at Cannes last year:



I would also like to direct everyone's attention to a marvelous "official" Tati site at www.tativille.com. And the exhibit "La ville en Tatirama" is moving from Rotterdam and Paris to London soon, I believe:

http://www.frieze.com/column_single.asp?c=95
http://www.archi.fr/IFA/expos/tatiram/tatirama.htm

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 18:13 (9 years ago) Permalink

What do you all think of Play Time (and the other films)? It's commonly understood to be a critique of contemporary life and city planning, but does the ending imply that these places are hospitable after all, or that it's up to us to transcend them?

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 18:15 (9 years ago) Permalink

Oh, also, the DVD has an introduction from David Lynch. If anyone is familiar with the final episode of Twin Peaks, you'll notice that the sequence where the bank teller totters from end of the bank and back in long shot is ripped from a similar gag in Play Time.

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 18:17 (9 years ago) Permalink

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.

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 18:20 (9 years ago) Permalink

"Slam your door in golden silence"

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 19:40 (9 years ago) Permalink

I think that Play Time manages to acknowledge the failures and isolation of Modernism while being taken by its utopian promise. The cinematography clearly communicates a love for International Style aestheics, but the beauty of the widescreen shot usually gives way to the closeup in which the usability of the design is tested.

The film's just as notable for its sound design - all echoes and ambience.

Brian Miller, Tuesday, 29 July 2003 19:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

what has become of ILF?

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 20:04 (9 years ago) Permalink

There simply isn't much good discussion there.

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 20:14 (9 years ago) Permalink

Or less than here, at any rate.

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 20:15 (9 years ago) Permalink

It will be interesting to see if this threads gets more than 20 ans amt.

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).

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 20:19 (9 years ago) Permalink

Just add to this thread! No need for two Tati threads.

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 20:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

I must sample him again some time - I saw a few many years ago and found them completely unfunny, and haven't watched him since.

Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 21:13 (9 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, I've never seen Playtime, though I guess I should. I really couldn't get into M. Hulot's Holiday. I've just never gotten the dude's appeal.

s1utsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 21:15 (9 years ago) Permalink

i was sold on M.Hulot's Holiday in Eberts book of great movies and have enjoyed it twice since the purchase.. if i like Holiday, would i like Play Time? or is it apples n oranges?

thomas de'aguirre (biteylove), Tuesday, 29 July 2003 21:20 (9 years ago) Permalink

just saw the restoration at the Auckland International Film Festival - gorgeousness gorgeousness gorgeousness, although I've encountered more haters than fans (the usual problem = "they seem too, um, thought out; not spontaneous enough"). possibly the best use of glass EVAH, amazing sound design (the early scene with the glass-enclosed waiting room, the chairs, etc).
everything's usable!

etc, Wednesday, 30 July 2003 00:06 (9 years ago) Permalink

I think it's one of the best films I've ever seen. They recently showed M. Hulot's Something or Other at the Cambridge Film Festival, but you couldn't get in unless you were a child or accompanying a child.

PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Wednesday, 30 July 2003 10:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

Tati season at the NFT in August: http://www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/tati/

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.

amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 31 July 2003 16:12 (9 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
OK, I'm reviving because I wanted to post but didn't get around to it (plus I know AMateurist is up and i'm bored) A fantastic film, certainly one of the best ever made. I'm frankly in awe of the untiring scene conception and choreography that Tati brought to it. The restaurant segment is simply one of the most purely joyful cinematic passages I've ever witnessed, a real marvel. Nice to learn of the DVD edition, but really - is it worth watching this thing on anything other than the big screen?

Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 16 August 2003 07:45 (9 years ago) Permalink

It's worth it only b/c this film is so endlessly fascinating and even if all a video viewing does is remind you of its glories--instead of allow you to be absorbed in them--that's reward enough. I'd like to see in 70mm something awful, though.

amateurist (amateurist), Saturday, 16 August 2003 17:21 (9 years ago) Permalink

will watch playtime. thanks for the reminder.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 16 August 2003 20:23 (9 years ago) Permalink

Am I the only dissenter here? I liked Playtime, don't get me wrong, but it rather rams its point home over and over again. I must admit I came to it as someone who doesn't care overmuch for Tati's slapstick anyway. Yeah, OK, the glass the reflections the silly tourists. It's not exactly the soul of subtlety is it? OK, the soundscapes I grant you are brillant. Enjoy it by all means, but are you really sugesting it's the greatest film ever?! ...as in better than anything by Ozu...!!!! [whose revival season I've been enjoying recently] ...or countless others.

Daniel (dancity), Saturday, 16 August 2003 20:25 (9 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
I am going to see this tonight, this thread has settled it.

Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:11 (9 years ago) Permalink

when?

RJG (RJG), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:17 (9 years ago) Permalink

Le Jour du Fete is one of my favourite films ever.

Go see Belleville Rendezvous for lots of humorous Tati references. Also it is an amazing film. Really funny.

Ed (dali), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:26 (9 years ago) Permalink

is the R2 going to be an American release? ETA?

gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:31 (9 years ago) Permalink

'La Ville En Tatirama' is such a good exhibition that after I saw it in 2002 I went home and wrote an album about it.

Momus (Momus), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:47 (9 years ago) Permalink

The relevant bit of the essay:

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.

Momus (Momus), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:52 (9 years ago) Permalink

Or imagine Buster Keaton surviving the arrival of the talkies only to switch his interest to Kafkaesque satires on non-existent Modernist utopias. It would be facile to say that Tati was on the side of 'la douce France' against the visions of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. But why then does he make Modernism look so appealing? You could almost say that Modernism finds its truest expression in 'Playtime'. As so often happens, it's satire which most permanently commemorates the things it's supposedly undermining.

Momus (Momus), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:52 (9 years ago) Permalink

Tati claimed his aim was never to criticize the modern city. I think he wanted to do the thing I'm also trying to do, which is to take 'story' right to the very brink of its dissolution in the 'pure play of form'. This is something an artist, a storyteller, might want to do later in his career, when simply telling stories is not enough. It's a kind of brinksmanship. How close to the collapse of story (and the collapse of the kind of attention audiences give stories) can I get? And of course, after 'Playtime' it was pretty much all over for Tati. He'd been fingered as an artist rather than an entertainer. His brinksmanship put him over the edge. He lost his mass audience.

Momus (Momus), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

(Sorry, for some reason that refused to paste all in one chunk.)

Momus (Momus), Monday, 1 September 2003 17:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

That is really perceptive, Momus. Which album do you refer to?

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.). ...

amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:04 (9 years ago) Permalink

This is one reason that, as I mentioned above, Tati wished to setup a theater that showed Play Time every day, year round. It can't be absorbed in one viewing. The utopianism and hubris of that wish is dumbfounding.

amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:06 (9 years ago) Permalink

Oh and Gabbneb: a UK (R2) release is planned, with subtitles of course (not sure what extras it'll contain, but it'll be a transfer of the restored print).... No R1 released announced yet, sadly.

amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:07 (9 years ago) Permalink

Which album do you refer to?

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.

Momus (Momus), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:15 (9 years ago) Permalink

Also Belleville Rendezvous is Language free as well. It is pure Tati really.

Ed (dali), Monday, 1 September 2003 18:48 (9 years ago) Permalink

Er. I kinda walked out of this.

Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 1 September 2003 20:21 (9 years ago) Permalink

I am going to see it tomorrow.

RJG (RJG), Monday, 1 September 2003 20:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

Cozen tell us more! (He said with trepidation.)

amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 03:54 (9 years ago) Permalink

Well I guess I went to see it fully expecting what I saw.

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.

Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 10:12 (9 years ago) Permalink

I almost walked out of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice last week too. I'm a restless cinema-goer.

Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 10:25 (9 years ago) Permalink

COzen, I get a pretty similar reaction to Tati to you. 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.

Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 10:32 (9 years ago) Permalink

I think it's difficult for people to adjust to 'Playtime' if you're not used to cinema which is visual and essentially silent -- in other words, somehow less cerebral and more tactile than your average Hollywood film. Because, although people often say we live in a visual age and that the popular media are 'sensational', in fact nothing could be further from the truth. We live in an era of cocaine-hatched plots that fit together like a chinese puzzle, of high concept and high moral tone, of word rather than image, of thinking and feeling rather than looking and 'touching'. (When I say 'tactile' or 'touching' in relation to film I mean just enjoying texture: the colours, the crackle, the quality of sound itself, not just sound as a vehicle for meaning and meaning as a vehicle for plot.)

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.

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 21:54 (9 years ago) Permalink

('The Sacrifice' is also a visual / textural rather than verbal / textual film.)

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...

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 22:01 (9 years ago) Permalink

But the text that the Sacrifice brings with it is stilted and didactic and preachy Momus, it's a shadow and feint of reality, horrible really, horrible.

Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 22:36 (9 years ago) Permalink

Exactly?

Cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 22:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

The more original an artist is, the more he runs the risk of being seen as 'wrong about life'. And if you don't agree with his model of life, no matter how persuasive a Tati or a Tarkovsky is, you'll just find it 'preachy'. We both probably saw a lot of TV before we saw the work of either Mr T. TV is just as didactic and preachy as any art film about its -- essentially mediocre -- worldview. But by dint of repetition it makes its presumptions about life transparent. When we eventually see the work of some film-maker with a radically different worldview from the TV or Hollywood worldview -- and I'm thinking of a Straub rather than even a Godard, who often spoofs Hollywood and therefore shares some of its presuppositions, even while attacking them -- we're likely either to be smitten or appalled. I went to see Tarkovsky's 'Mirror' three times the week it came out in Scotland. Nothing I'd ever seen on a screen even came near its... spirituality. But that extreme attraction could just as well have been repulsion, for almost the same reasons. I might have said, precisely because I'd never seen anything like that before, 'he is wrong about life'. Instead I said something like 'Everything I know is wrong, but this is right'.

Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 3 September 2003 00:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

To give a tiny example (of 'Mirror's originality, and its status as 'textural' in a way that TV and Hollywood aren't), 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.

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.

Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 3 September 2003 00:57 (9 years ago) Permalink

OK, I'm thinking. I think you've misunderstood what I meant but I realise that that is no small fault of my own.

Cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 4 September 2003 23:03 (9 years ago) Permalink

I saw 'monsieur hulot's holiday' tonight. it were right funny.

RJG (RJG), Thursday, 4 September 2003 23:14 (9 years ago) Permalink

Is Hulot a good / interesting / original character?

Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 6 September 2003 18:21 (9 years ago) Permalink

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.

jed_, Monday, 3 September 2012 11:39 (8 months ago) Permalink

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!"

Grampsy, Monday, 3 September 2012 11:42 (8 months ago) Permalink

A+

Eric H., Monday, 3 September 2012 11:47 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 12:19 (8 months ago) Permalink

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????

TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 3 September 2012 12:22 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 13:01 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, 3 September 2012 14:35 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 14:50 (8 months ago) Permalink

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?

Eric H., Monday, 3 September 2012 15:00 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 3 September 2012 15:04 (8 months ago) Permalink

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)

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 15:06 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, 3 September 2012 15:08 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 15:18 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

How's My Modding? Call 1-800-SBU-RSELF (WmC), Monday, 3 September 2012 15:24 (8 months ago) Permalink

'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.

Eric H., Monday, 3 September 2012 15:26 (8 months ago) Permalink

That Grampsy post! holy smokes!

ms fotheringham (Crabbits), Monday, 3 September 2012 15:28 (8 months ago) Permalink

playtime is probably all-time top 10 for me

clouds, Monday, 3 September 2012 15:29 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 15:30 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Eric H., Monday, 3 September 2012 15:37 (8 months ago) Permalink

Jeez...easy there, Killer.

How's My Modding? Call 1-800-SBU-RSELF (WmC), Monday, 3 September 2012 15:38 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, 3 September 2012 15:50 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.)

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 15:57 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Monday, 3 September 2012 16:03 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

Eric H., Monday, 3 September 2012 16:13 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 16:54 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 3 September 2012 18:49 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Monday, 3 September 2012 18:56 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

^^^ this

a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 September 2012 19:02 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Eric H., Monday, 3 September 2012 19:24 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 3 September 2012 19:45 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

clemenza, Monday, 3 September 2012 20:34 (8 months ago) Permalink

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.

Ward Fowler, Monday, 3 September 2012 21:58 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Monday, 3 September 2012 22:11 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

"Scrooge McDuck is soooooo sexy." (R Baez), Monday, 3 September 2012 23:29 (8 months ago) Permalink

r u mocking me

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Tuesday, 4 September 2012 02:36 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

"An Andy Kaufman for the Four Loko generation" (R Baez), Wednesday, 5 September 2012 01:07 (8 months ago) Permalink

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

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Wednesday, 5 September 2012 05:24 (8 months ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

having issuus w/their format, ugh

j., Wednesday, 19 September 2012 18:50 (8 months ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

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 :(

just sayin, Monday, 10 December 2012 15:49 (5 months ago) Permalink

shows again in NYC end of month

saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, 10 December 2012 15:51 (5 months ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

...hence I'm seeing in an hour

saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 27 December 2012 18:53 (4 months ago) Permalink

70mm?

Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Thursday, 27 December 2012 19:37 (4 months ago) Permalink

yup

乒乓, Thursday, 27 December 2012 23:04 (4 months ago) Permalink

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.

saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 December 2012 00:05 (4 months ago) Permalink

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

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 28 December 2012 00:05 (4 months ago) Permalink

great Momus posts up there in 2003 btw.

saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 December 2012 00:08 (4 months ago) Permalink

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

乒乓, Friday, 28 December 2012 01:36 (4 months ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

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

saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 30 January 2013 20:31 (3 months ago) Permalink

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)

MaresNest, Wednesday, 30 January 2013 20:56 (3 months ago) Permalink


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