“I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass”: Jacques Tati’s Playtime

Though the modernity that Jacques Tati constructs in Playtime (1967) now lies far in society’s past, the film remains a masterpiece of visual comedy reminding viewers of our own contemporary constructions that threaten to engulf us. Tati’s presentation of Paris is a stale setting of concrete and glass, with its famed landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower, only seen in window reflections or at extreme distance. It is a civilization that runs on synchronized occurrence; the visiting tourists are efficiently gathered and escorted through the world of cubicles, trade shows, and traffic. However, Tati’s famed character Monsieur Hulot (played by Tati himself previously in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), and once more in Trafic (1971)) navigates this newly-created society in constant befuddlement; this world is now a modern maze of a terrain that Hulot no longer recognizes.  

Playtime’s visual genius lies in its comedy of how these constructions alienate the numerous characters attempting to interact with one another. On one occasion, two men attempt to light their cigarettes for each other only to realize the glass window that separates them, thus needing to find a route to satisfy their nicotine needs. In one of the film’s numerous long-running gags, Hulot’s efforts to secure an appointment with an account manager is a delight of missed interactions, as false window reflections and enclosed cubicles with multiple hidden exits hinder his hope at completing business. For Hulot, these office buildings, in all their perfect precision, are a labyrinth.

While Playtime is nearly wordless in dialogue, the film emphasizes the full sounds found in its urban setting. Smatterings of English from the visiting American tourists, or German from an enraged salesman of a “silent” door-slamming company, can be heard, but the film mostly operates without discernible dialogue. (Note: The Criterion Collection DVD release of Playtime does allow for optional English subtitles while viewing the film. To this reviewer, they are unnecessary to understand the narrative. Enjoy a foreign film without reading!) Instead, the sound effects of this world further extend the film’s aural humor. From the audible crunch of the waiting room’s plush leather seats to the click of the harried executive’s footsteps on the tiled floor, Hulot (and the audience) observe his surroundings’ sounds with comic puzzlement. The effect of Tati’s wordless-but-not-silent narrative further emphasizes his art of visual storytelling.

The setting of the film’s second half, a grand restaurant preparing for its opening night debut, is Tati’s antithesis to the glass-encased world of office precision. Here is the deliberate deconstruction of constructed society where all attempts to function with exactness fail marvelously with comic amusement. The restaurant is a disaster of style over function, as its architect is constantly harangued by staff members complaining they are unable to perform their duties due to the restaurant’s poor aesthetic design. Issues include a dance floor tile that comes apart when stepped on, wooden banisters that prevent the bartender from seeing the patrons at the bar, and most prominently, metallic chair backs that both rip apart the waiting staff’s uniforms while also imprinting their design upon the seated customers’ clothing. The restaurant, named The Royal Garden, attempts to maintain the constructed hierarchy of capitalist society, where ‘the customer is king’, but its impractical architecture destroys such societal norms, leaving the patrons a merry band of equals who revel in the restaurant’s devastated ambience. In one of the film’s best visual gags, a former comrade of Hulot’s, now working as the restaurant’s doorman, is forced to maintain the existence of its shattered glass door, opening and closing an imaginary access for customers as they enter and exit. Here, participants in Tati’s Playtime maintain the societal construct and existence of the very material that formerly excluded them even in its complete destruction.

While viewing Playtime is a great pleasure of visual comedy it is also a feat of concentration for an audience. The film is full of wonderful long shots; there are very few close-ups in Playtime. From the film’s opening, showing an airport terminal full of new arrivals, the audience is challenged to notice the unique individuals who will make multiple appearances in clusters of crowds throughout the film. Multiple characters also wear Hulot’s famed wardrobe: his trenchcoat, fedora, and pipe. Tati emphasizes that it is not only the new constructions that engulf his Hulot, but also society itself, in all its reflections and imitations. Puzzled tourists view travel posters promoting destinations whose famed landmarks are also obscured from view by portrayed office buildings; in fact, the exact ones that dominate the tourists’ view of the Paris they are visiting. To ask, does anyone really recognize the downtown skyline of their residence any longer? 

Playtime is an extraordinary cinema feat; the most expensive French film of its age whose main theme is to highlight the distress that is caused by the constant construction of contemporary creation. Considering our own age of swift process and social media reviews, to which group in Tati’s Playtime would one happily join and belong: the promptly-ushered tourists of an urban outing or the last patrons at a ruined restaurant? As Nick Lowe once sang:  “I need the noises of destruction.”

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