PlayTime

Tati erected an entire skyscraper outside of Paris to mount this ode to mid-20th century cosmopolis. The result is a silent film that’s not silent at all, a nonverbal story conveyed so lucidly that the few spoken lines and the handful of languages in which they are uttered are virtually irrelevant.

The movie not only presents us with evidence of the alienating effects of the post-war modern world, but also an antidote, through a subtle play of comic and democratic performance. In this regard, Tati’s film career evolved from his early work as a mime and performance artist.

Monsieur Hulot, the bumbling and kindly protagonist, is not an agent of violence like Caution. Hulot is a ghost, fascinated yet endlessly rejected by the city’s sleek, uncompromising interiors and exteriors. It’s not at all a dark film, yet Tati was clever in taking international modernism and 1960s American commercial design at its word; if this was a design for ease and bourgeois leisure, then a Paris saturated by that ease must necessarily be a playground, a site of fun.