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Just finished watching another DVD from LOVEFILM , Jacques Tati's "Playtime", a surreal comedy completed in 1967.
Tati pioneered a comedic process that relied almost exclusively on visual elements infused with ambient sound, dialogue was almost entirely abandoned as a means to convey humour. Presented in an often uniform and unobtrusive fashion with the camera doing very little work at all, Tati’s subsequent feature films appear as little more than a collection of frieze-like sketches strung together for cheap laughs. However, this surface simplicity belies a complex, multi-layered process of preparation and choreography that Tati stuck to meticulously.
Tati’s masterpiece of cerebral comedy: Playtime drew together all of his ideological concerns in one tightly packed visual canvas. Shot on 70mm film stock and featuring bold set and sound design, every scene in Playtime is a cascade of visual comedy effects, going off like fireworks one after the other, producing an overwhelming sensory assault that is, at times, physically hard to take in. Tati maintains his customary distance, never resorting to the tight close-up but preferring to expose Hulot’s everyman figure as isolated and insignificant amidst the imposing uniformity of his surroundings. Hulot is a passenger ambling through a fully modernised Paris of sleek glass and steel office towers, now transformed to resemble every other major city in the world, as depicted in numerous tourism posters. The city’s treasured monuments are but a fading memory, seemingly incongruous with the new ethos of cold conformity. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc De Triomphe and numerous other icons of antiquated French culture are spotted in reflections as people pass through the clear glass doors, as constant reminder of what has passed. In order to facilitate his vision for Playtime, Tati had an entire scale-city built on the outskirts of Paris. Dubbed “Tativille” it featured moveable, cut-down models of skyscrapers that could be positioned accordingly and large ground-level street sets custom-made to suit the directors’ pre-planned intentions. Tati built sets to represent a notion of modern day Paris, it seems ironic that Jean-Luc Godard’s sci-fi noir thriller Alphaville, filmed two years before, was shot on location in the French capital, despite the events of the film taking place some time in the future. Grandly designed and curiously executed, Playtime is a uniquely conceived piece of cinema.
(Summarised from a BFI review)
I must watch "Mon Oncle" next. Also, some time ago WIRE in their CINESONIC section reviewed some CD's of soundtrack music to Jacques Tati films , and i will have to dig the issue out to read again.
Tati pioneered a comedic process that relied almost exclusively on visual elements infused with ambient sound, dialogue was almost entirely abandoned as a means to convey humour. Presented in an often uniform and unobtrusive fashion with the camera doing very little work at all, Tati’s subsequent feature films appear as little more than a collection of frieze-like sketches strung together for cheap laughs. However, this surface simplicity belies a complex, multi-layered process of preparation and choreography that Tati stuck to meticulously.
Tati’s masterpiece of cerebral comedy: Playtime drew together all of his ideological concerns in one tightly packed visual canvas. Shot on 70mm film stock and featuring bold set and sound design, every scene in Playtime is a cascade of visual comedy effects, going off like fireworks one after the other, producing an overwhelming sensory assault that is, at times, physically hard to take in. Tati maintains his customary distance, never resorting to the tight close-up but preferring to expose Hulot’s everyman figure as isolated and insignificant amidst the imposing uniformity of his surroundings. Hulot is a passenger ambling through a fully modernised Paris of sleek glass and steel office towers, now transformed to resemble every other major city in the world, as depicted in numerous tourism posters. The city’s treasured monuments are but a fading memory, seemingly incongruous with the new ethos of cold conformity. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc De Triomphe and numerous other icons of antiquated French culture are spotted in reflections as people pass through the clear glass doors, as constant reminder of what has passed. In order to facilitate his vision for Playtime, Tati had an entire scale-city built on the outskirts of Paris. Dubbed “Tativille” it featured moveable, cut-down models of skyscrapers that could be positioned accordingly and large ground-level street sets custom-made to suit the directors’ pre-planned intentions. Tati built sets to represent a notion of modern day Paris, it seems ironic that Jean-Luc Godard’s sci-fi noir thriller Alphaville, filmed two years before, was shot on location in the French capital, despite the events of the film taking place some time in the future. Grandly designed and curiously executed, Playtime is a uniquely conceived piece of cinema.
(Summarised from a BFI review)
I must watch "Mon Oncle" next. Also, some time ago WIRE in their CINESONIC section reviewed some CD's of soundtrack music to Jacques Tati films , and i will have to dig the issue out to read again.
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