‘PlayTime’ {1967}

Jacques Tati’s ‘PlayTime’ {1967} is deprived of a plot. It does not have a story or a hero and the dialogues are hardly audible. Instead it has a series of incidents. It has no central character. Hundreds of people seem to be moving around as if aimlessly.

Mr. Hulot represented by Tati himself seems to have been implanted in the city by accident.

The events take place over a 24-hour period, a single day and evening, followed by a brief period the next morning.

The viewer doesn’t seem to be watching a film but observing several characters throughout the movie. Humanity meanders around bewildered but seemed to have hopes to see another day through a spotlessly clean futuristic city.

Tati envisaged a most imaginative and insane idea: to build a city of his own design, in which he could shoot freely and have absolute control.

So Tati built a colossal set outside Paris. It had an airline terminal, city streets and footpaths, high rise buildings, offices, lampposts and a traffic circle. 

The buildings were made of glass and steel. There are endless corridors, elevators, cubicles and modern gadgets.  

 

Perhaps it inspired Spielberg to build an enormous set of an airline terminal in Tom Hank’s ‘The Terminal’.

 

Tati shot exclusively in long shots without closeups. The viewer is unable to focus on one part of the picture. The background and the foreground are full of various actions and activities. The viewer notices one action but invariable miss several others in a single shot.

Hulot becomes part of the scenery; he disappears for long patches of screen time, seemingly lost in the bustle of the modernized world. But then, this seems to be the purpose for the picture. 

The audience observes a world full of absurdity and meaninglessness in what we have built and keep building up.

With his long stemmed pipe, raincoat and hat, his socks in full view and his pants often too short, the Character Hulot moves about somewhat lost around the city, perplexed and baffled by the  urbanization and modern gadgetry. Jacques Tati’s Hulot as a character can be compared with Charles Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

 

PlayTime looks a lot like Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times (1938). Chaplin poked fun at conveyor belts, the concocted ridiculous feeding machines and the spread of industries and corporate, degrading, demeaning, humiliating, disgracing and alienating human beings. On the other hand, Tati’s PlayTime surveys architecture, transportation, and modern social behavior from a distance, giving the audience a feeling how modernisation and conveniences are futile.

During that time Playtime became the most expensive movie in the history of French Cinema.

There is a need to see the film several times to understand and appreciate the actions.


 

Bergman - Revisited_A Lesson in Love (En lektion i kärlek) – 1954

 

With a subtle poke at the Human Existence, Ingmar Bergman completes his 14^th Film ‘A Lesson In Love’ {1954}.

The film outlines the self-centeredness of mankind, the complexities, illusions and paradoxes of love.

Bergman muses over the nature of human relations between an intelligent man who is an obstetrician and a beautiful woman who is a model. They have been married for fifteen years. But then the intelligent man out of imprudence starts a brief affair with one of his younger patients.

Jealously raises its ugly head resulting in the wife commencing her own affair in a state of furious vengeance with her former fiancé. Soon one begins to realize that marriage is an amusing institution.

The Tin Drum_1979

The world of the adults is full of violence, crassness, baseless activities and meaningless existence. Adults solely go after wealth, material gain and power.  

It is not worth coming into this world, where the adults think that they are terribly important while evidently their existence is utter ridiculousness if not anything else.

Like any child who displays an attitude of self-centeredness
concerned only with what he wants at that moment, the adults share the same outlook in their miserable existence.

Under these circumstances, a three year old boy foreseeing the sickly behavioral attitude of the disgusting grown-ups, the adult antics and of the futile future of existence decides to stop growing!

He becomes an observer rather than a participant in world and worldly affairs, leading a life of existential solitude – while life and time marches on.

Before and while watching this  Deutsch film ‘The Tin Drum’ {1979} by Volker Schlöndorff [novel by Günter Grass] one would do well by recalling the grotesque history of Germany in the 1^st half of the 20^th Century.

Scarface__1932

 

"Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it." These are the words of the protagonist in the film Scarface {1932} directed by Howard Hawks and co produced by Howard Hughes.

The film begins with the statement: “This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty”.

“The World Is Yours” a flashing neon sign opposite the Protagonist apartment says it all – greed and the frenzy & quest to succeed at any cost, even killing other people. And like all rise, there is a fall, be it the Nazis or some Gangsters.

Excess desire for wealth and power leads to a spiral downfall.

The film was based on the 1930 novel Scarface by Armitage Trail. It showcases Chicago's Depression-Era exploitation, the  gangster era and the organized crime. The protagonist is loosely based on Al Capone, nicknamed the "Scarface").

Brian de Palma’s 1983 Scarface starring Al Pacino was a remake of this 1932 version.

By the way the Protagonist was Paul Muni considered as one of the most prestigious actor in that era at Warner Bros. studio. He was given the rare privilege of choosing which parts he wanted. 

More at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Muni