Monsieur Hulot - "Playtime"

Here begins my post-trip continuance of my blog. I will be posting on cultural matters pretty much as they come to me. This is a picture of Jacques Tati's famous character "Monsieur Hulot" in the 1967 movie "Playtime." Jacques Tati (1907-1982) was kind of the French Charlie Chaplin and his character, Monsieur Hulot, was, I suppose, somewhat the equivalent of the "Little Tramp" - although he was quite a tall man. Most of us have not heard of Jacques Tati, but he was very famous in France and Europe and was acknowledged by Rowan Atkinson (i.e. "Mr. Bean") as a major influence. Like Atkinson, he had training as a mime and it shows, however, unlike Atkinson, his character was always a well-meaning, friendly bumbler rather than the crabby bumbler that Mr. Bean often is. Anyway, I just wanted to say a few things about this movie which I have enjoyed ever since I discovered it about a year ago.

First of all, there is an innocence and naivete which would be foreign to many American movie audiences today - even when I was a teenager some of us might have said that it was "dorky." However there is a subtlety and sophistication to it once you get beyond the surface feel of it. There isn't a strong plot to it. To the extent to which there is a plot, it is about a group of American tourists in Paris - except Paris has become such a modern city, that they might as well be in New York (anything distinctive about Paris is pretty much gone) AND it is about Mons. Hulot wandering around town and his adventures AND it is about how these two groups (and others) encounter each other in a restaurant. However there is not really much plot or character development. What it is about is, modern cities, and public space and how modern architecture has created false barriers and is inhuman, and about how people end up reclaiming public space - sometimes breaking down architecture to do so. (In fact a modern reviewer stated that if Tati were alive today he would have delighted in tackling the "problem" of the cell phone - intrigued by the way it turns public space into private space. He probably would have created a movie in which all the cell phones would have malfunctioned and people would have been forced to interact with each other, being a part of the actual community around them.)

It is a long movie, so I will just concentrate on the final sequence: the "Royal Garden Restaurant" sequence. According to Jonathan Rosenbaum it is "Brueghel-like" and the "most formidable mise-en-scene in the history of cinema." It is a tour de force. It begins with the opening of a new restaurant and all of the last minute preparations of the staff. There is no single character who is focused on for very long and no close ups. (Thus the "Breugel-like" description.) There can be anywhere from 10 to 50+ people on the screen and the movie was filmed in 70 mm originally and meant to be viewed on a big screen. There are so many things that happen. However, one can gauge four major divisions based on the type of music. First there is a bossa nova band playing fairly relaxed music while certain architectural and personal problems are discovered at the restaurant. Division One. Then a jazz band replaces the first group and starts playing some more wild music. (I even think some of the people are dancing the "Christendom swing" and not the authentic East Coast Swing step - THAT is disordered!) Division Two. Then there is a long drum solo which changes into a more tribal, rock-like beat and the other musicians join in. Division Three. The people dance really wildly and even more chaos ensues.

Finally, a part of the architecture actually does break and the musicians leave in disgust, but it is used by this brash American tourist (who looks like an odd combination of Teddy Kennedy and Jay Leno) to create his own private club in one part of the restaurant. However he then helps to get someone to play the piano for everyone in the restaurant. The pianist, a young woman, plays some lighter, more relaxing music and is eventually joined by an older chanteuse who sings some of her old Edith Piaf-like hits and gets everyone to join in. Division Four. More and more people (who aren't strictly dress code) enter the restaurant to sing along and be a part of this community that has formed naturally after being freed from the "strictures" of the modern architecture. One of the reasons they can is because one of the glass doors had shattered early in the evening, but the doorman keeps up the ruse by "opening and closing" mime-like with only the bare door handle. He ultimately just gives up. (A very funny running joke in the movie has to do with the use of glass in modern architecture and how it gives the illusion of transparency, but ultimately is a boundary.)

Finally, the sun rises (it must be between 5 and 6 AM) and everyone realizes that it is time to go. They need to have some sort of "after-glow" party and the brash (and wealthy) American tourist buys coffee for everyone at a drugstore across the street.

All the humor, story-telling, and symbolism is in the visual. Although there is "dialogue" it is so insignificant and deliberately soft so as to indicate its unimportance. I have watched the movie in English and in French and it makes no difference.

It is definitely a "European" movie that is very symbolic and deals in concepts and social criticism. However it is not in anyway obnoxious or preachy, but rather sweet and light - and very humorous.