Jacques Tati/Play Time

momus, do you think 'playtime' is bleak in any way?

Considering Playtime damn near became my favorite film the first time I saw it some two years ago (though I should confess that I routinely declare new films among the best 10 I've ever seen before they eventually settle into less lofty categories), I'm surprised I haven't made an effort to see any of Tati's other films. Maybe I too easily buy the notion that it's both the film that cemented and ended his career as a major auteur. Well, I'll catch Mon Oncle pretty soon at any rate.

i love this tati quote: "when people don't know each other they follow right angles; when they are intimate they go in curves."

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."

(sorry to go on).

I've only seen Mon oncle. I wanted to laugh more than I did. Huggermugger in corners. I wish made things would not break but weather.

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.

that notion of children observing others in an effort to discern the intentional affordance of an object does really rhyme with the scene in "play time" where tati is in the waiting room...

This is playing the Castro Theatre in San Francisco for the next week. I'm going on Sunday (I think). I know absolutely next to nothing about it.

this thread, w. the exception of my contributions probably, is really good. esp. momus' & amst's bantering.

worth reading through to learn something abt the film, I guess, is what I mean.

youn's post was really interesting

my friend who just saw it said it was like "spending the night with a bunch of drunk people". This doesn't make much sense to me. So my question now is: is it enjoyable? Arty and pretentious and I can deal with.

i dunno, go see it for yourself and report back here.

Play Time is showing at the Music Box Theater in Chicago this week. I am going to try and convince Sarah to go see it with me. Cheer me on.

haha... I had the same problem, but Jessa finally broke. We're going tonight. I'll let you know how the picture and sound are... it's a restored print -- 70mm! DTS!

Gorgonzola said she'd rather throw me out of the house than sit through it with me, so now I'm living under an umbrella in a thicket-parked pram. Never mind, this baby has old-style spot-welded axles, rock solid! If I crane my neck a bit I can see what they're showing at the drive-in. The postman knows me by now and says hello.

Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing this twice. Tonight I'm commited to the girl, but maybe later this weekend or this week we could gather as ILXors and be big film geeks?

hope it plays for more than one week. they only have 70mm projection in the big theater, which means either (a) after a week it'll disappear or (b) it'll stay in the big theater for two or more weeks. i have plans to see it with a friend.

is this a local phenomenon or will it tour/open elsewhere?

it will tour like abba, in a fine stylee

Actually Sarah said we could do whatever I wanted tonight (no jokes, losers), so it's possible we might hit the 8:00 show.

I sold my dvd of Playtime for 80 bucks last year, time for the re-purchase!

That reminds me I need to put my Red Desert DVD on eBay before somebody reissues the fucker.

Saw this today, what a fucking insane movie. I was actually pretty overwhelmed when we stepped out of the theater. Great though. The entire restaurant sequence is one of the most intense things I've seen on film.

Momus was OTM above about this possibly being difficult for those unaccustomed to silent films. I mean, it's not silent, but you have to basically take the entire thing in visually (and it's a hell of a lot to take in). But I found the effort rewarding.

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.

I wish Criterion would announce this already.

I really like Ebert's Great Movies review of Hulot, and will point out that one line in it - "Mr. Hulot's Holiday'' is a French film, with hardly any words in it - is more descriptive than it sounds. Jour de Fete is a good alternative for those looking for something funny (as opposed to good-humored).

The entire restaurant sequence is one of the most intense things I've seen on film.

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

it's almost exhausting, your eyes and ears (

fuck...

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 extra footage was surprisingly meaty and included some remarkable shots. although it also included a scene where hulot actually talks intelligibly (for a few seconds), which was weird.

but yeah, this is still the best film ever.

which waiter do you prefer?

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

The guy who keeps fixing his hair was oddly reminiscent of Paul Reubens. I think he was my favorite.

yeah somebody in the audience yelled out "pee-wee!"

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.

Oh, I don't know, but certainly get in touch and let me know when you're planning to go.

seriously this movie makes me really proud to be human

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

I really liked it a lot. The part in the middle when he goes to the guy's apartment and watches TV was a little dull (relatively) but it did serve as a nice breather between the exhibition hall and the restaurant.

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 (amateuris...), July 29th, 2003.

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.

also i somehow missed this before but there is a breathless reference in play time.

I would definitely have to read up on this before seeing it again to know what to look out for the second time around. I didn't even notice one cardboard cutout!

I really liked the guy who comesinto the waiting room near the beginning and keeps hitting his papers and tapping his watch and clicking his pen.

The ending is great! When the bus is driving around the circle and she looks at the cars on hydraulics and the people on the street and the street lamps that match the flowers that Hulot gave her.

I really liked the guy who comesinto the waiting room near the beginning and keeps hitting his papers and tapping his watch and clicking his pen.
-- n.a. (nu...), August 30th, 2004.

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.)

i work across from the two federal buildings, and i can't help thinking about tativille:

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

I have this on a copied dvd, I can't watch it, it's a travesty!

get the bfi dvd. or better yet, buy a loft and a 70mm projector.

maybe i will see this again wednesday...

Wow. I know nothing about this movie, except that I hear it namechecked a lot, and I haven't even read this entire thread, just the new stuff, but I'm TOTALLY intrigued.

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

It's pretty good, jaymc, but it's no "Garden State."

(note: this may be sarcastic)

So, where can you order this on DVD?