Guide to Playtime (1967)
What’s it about?
A Where’s Wally maze of modernist Paris
Playtime follows a variety of characters as they muddle their way through a futuristic and unrecognisable Paris. At the airport, American tourists are herded through by a travel agent and in Paris
we encounter Tati for the first time as he chases and is chased by an officious Monsieur Giffard
in an office block. We move from the office, to a shop, to an apartment and then to a restaurant
where chaos abounds on opening night.
Who made it?
France’s answer to Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, the writer, director and star of Playtime, was
born in 1907 to French-Russian parents. He was considered by Entertainment Weekly to be
the 46th greatest film director of all time due to his ability to critique modern life and materialism
through his physical comedic style.
Inspiration for his greatest comic creation, Monsieur Hulot, came from Tati’s time in the cavalry
where he met a young hairdresser who knew nothing about horses. So instead of looking after the
horses, all he did was give them a cursory haircut. In a similar vein, Hulot in no way understands
the world he exists in.
Backstory
Tati signed the contract for Playtime, his fourth major film, off the back of his greatest success, the
Oscar-winning Mon oncle (1958), one of several films which starred the clumsy and inattentive
Monsieur Hulot. Hulot allowed Tati to explore man’s difficulty to adapt to his modern surroundings. However, by 1964, Tati was hesitant to give one character a central role. By casting nonprofessionals and mixing film with live performance, the intricacies unfold in a cacophony of visual
comedic details. Then, as Tati said, “the comic effect belongs to everyone.”
Production
To make a film where ‘everyone’ was the focus, Tati needed a set big enough to accommodate
them all. Colossal ‘Tativille’ was the result - complete with skyscrapers, and its own power station.
To compensate for spiralling set costs, Tati used life-size photographs as extras in his scenes.
Many of the ‘boxed’ office workers never move!
Reviews
“It is a film which comes from another planet where they make films differently. Playtime is perhaps
Europe of 1968 filmed by the first Martian filmmaker”.
The director of The 400 Blows, François Truffaut in a letter to Tati, 1968
British critic Gilbert Adair said that the film has to be viewed “several times, each from a different
seat in the auditorium” in order to view the many small, tightly-choreographed sight gags by several different actors.
“Never was Tati’s mastery of sound effects more inspired than in PLAYTIME...”
LA Times, 14 May 1998
What happened next?
Despite receiving rave reviews from many magazines some found ‘Playtime’ too pretentious. It
was not nearly as massive a commercial success as Tati had hoped for. Fans who were accustomed to the gauche, comic character Monsieur Hulot being the star in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
and Mon Oncle were disappointed to see less of him. Tati was eventually forced to edit the film
down from the original 155 minutes to 126 minutes.
Owing to the extravagance of the film’s production Tati spent the next ten years of his life paying off debts and, as a result, had much less freedom to produce films. The result, Tati’s next film
Trafic (1971), was low-budget and made for television, reverted to traditional style with Hulot embarking on a calamitous journey to Amsterdam. Tati did have plans for a final film, Confusion, set
in futuristic Paris and which would concentrate on modern society’s obsession with visual imagery.
Tati died, however, in 1982 before filming began.
Look out for...
In Playtime, Tati loads every shot with offbeat moments and cameos not all of which are noticeable
first time round. The wide-angled shots throughout allow for these to be ‘crammed’ into the film,
often many at a time. Here are a few to get you started:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cut-outs of the ‘real’ Paris reflected in windows and icons representing landmarks of the city;
The cardboard extras in the office scene;
The man with charcoal on his lips in the restaurant;
The streetlamps on the way back to the airport (what do they look like?);
The woman in orange on the motorbike at the roundabout;
The doorknob without a door;
A man stripping on stage at the restaurant.
Talking Points
• Why was the film shot in colour rather than black and white?
• How is this film different to those you’ve seen before?
• What examples can you find of the environment becoming less structured as the film develops?