FANTASIA OBSCURA: A French Auteur’s Magical and Masterful Take on the Modern World
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you just have to laugh at le monde fou et modern a nous…
Playtime (1967)
Distributed by: Spectra Films (Distributed by Continental Distributing in the US)
Directed by: Jacques Tati
Sometimes, when you need to make a strong statement about the effects of technology on our lives, what you really need is a comedian.
How technology affects humans is one of the main themes found through most science fiction, yet some of the best works on the subject were comedies produced by masters in that field. Perhaps the best known film to look at that theme was 1936’s Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece and his ‘first’ talkie in that while he was silent and used title cards to relate what his character had said, there are human voices on the soundtrack, all obviously issued by a machine (say, a phonograph or an early teleconferencing device).
Other comedians from the silent era would also take on the subject. Buster Keaton would have his take on how mass communications affect the viewer through the power of cinema in Sherlock Jr. (and later take on technological change in the episode “Once Upon a Time” for The Twilight Zone), while Harold Lloyd would use the telephone to try and get the edge on his face-time-only rival for the girl in Number, Please?
Which of course meant that come the 1950s, when Jacques Tati emerges as the only heir apparent to the silent comedians, that the effects of technological change would play a role in his work as well.
Tati, who played in cabarets in France before the war, got into film production soon after liberation, and almost immediately went behind the camera, mainly thanks to the original choice for helming L’ecole des fracteurs having a schedule conflict. Soon after, Tati would develop his iconic silent clown, Monsieur Hulot, and portray the character in Les vacances des Monsieur Hulot and Mon oncle, where Tati first pits Hulot against the modern age, with an iconic encounter with a plastic pitcher:
But it’s with Hulot’s third film that Tati presents his masterpiece:
Our film opens at an airport, with no individual characters really the focus but all of them having moments that flow into each other, like a flock of birds flying into view, each one getting a chance to perform an aerial maneuver before going off camera. The airport’s antiseptic and cold, which allows each character’s humanity to stand out through their quirks.
We ultimately linger on a group of tourists from America, speaking random inanities (with their lines penned for the script by newspaper columnist Art Buchwald) as they get herded through by their guides. One of the tourist, Barbara (Barbara Dennek in her only credited role) seems more anxious than the others to actually get to experience L’esprit de Paris, but has to settle for the packaged atmosphere as the group is pushed along to the busy modern center of Paris.
As the Americans are forced to wander according to their schedule, we slide sideways into Hulot, who has business in town that’s not explained, but is frustrating to carry out as he can’t get his simple meeting to take care of the matter. Hulot’s effort to get things done gets undone when he gets lost while trying to get to his meeting through a cube farm:
Hulot ultimately gets lost at a trade fair that Barbara gets dragged to, where she makes a chilling realization after getting her only glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in a reflection in one of the glass doors she walks through, which says something depressing about globalization:
Later, the day is over and the tour is shuffled to the hotel. Hulot, finally getting his unexplained business resolved, is met by an army buddy. He invites Hulot to his home for a drink, which we watch through the floor-to-ceiling picture windows that are the side of the building, its inhabitants like observed rats in a lab:
There’s a lot to watch and take in as you follow these characters around through this modern nightmare. Each shot is busy with activity while the soundtrack rises and falls like waves at the beach. There’s overwhelming simultaneous stimuli to process as you follow and go in and out of the lives of these characters, especially after you leave them alone for a while.
For ultimately, the scene shifts to another part of town, where a new nightclub, the Royal Garden, is supposed to have it’s opening night. They are expecting their first customers, even though workmen are still laying tile and running the wires for the electrics. It’s a race of commerce versus deadlines, both trying to work against entropy as the crush of club-goers strains the not-well-thought-out decisions management made.
Ultimately, both Barbara and Hulot wander into the chaos, reminding us that, oh yeah, we were looking at them earlier, right…?
In fact, the whole Royal Garden sequence could easily have been a separate movie. It’s a wonderful segment in its own right, and less ambitious film makers might have settled just for this. But Tati, having already built momentum following his other characters, is able to keep the flow going even without his supposed leads. And this was his intention, to show how lost we’ve gotten in our modern surroundings, the fact that we really don’t need humans to tell a story anymore is part of the overall theme, really.
If there is a real star to the film, it was the set he constructed for the movie. Dubbed ‘Tativille’, the striking post-modern stylings his characters get lost in are some of the most impressive passive damnations of uncontrollable technology ever put on screen. Used just for this film and a short subject on the art of comedy, Cour du Soir, the silver and steel colorings almost trick the eyes into thinking that it’s looking at a black and white film, with what interruptions to the pallets viewers catch coming from those annoying humans that insist on being present.
It’s a striking and effective set, one that Tati spent a lot of care and funds on. The sets, complete with electricity and running water, came to 17 million French francs in 1967, approximately 50 million dollars in today’s currency. Costs were high as the shooting schedule for the film ran for three years, requiring continuous upkeep during the shoot, and some repairs were necessitated after storms damaged pieces. When asked about the costs, Tati would point out that hiring a A-list talent for the film would have cost as much. And since the theme was the loss of humanity, to the point where even his Hulot was barely seen in the film, it made perfect sense to go this route.
The choices Tati made on the film may have been artistic statements, but they were also financial mistakes. Because of the overhead for the sets, along with Tati’s insistence that the film be shown only in 70 mm prints at a time when almost every theater was equipped to only run 35 mm film, the initial run of the movie was limited to only a few venues. Audiences that could come were disappointed that they got a Hulot film that barely had Hulot in it; as funny as it was, at over two hours in length and with no one (human) character to follow, they felt isolated and reacted coldly to the film. And when the movie finally came to the States, with 20 minutes of cuts and reduced to the smaller 35 mm prints, the film still lost money.
Tati made one of the worst mistakes you can make as a film producer: He put his own money into the production budget. When the film flopped, Tati went bankrupt; to get out of the hole, he’d ultimately have to give the audiences one more straightforward unassuming Hulot film, 1971’s Traffic, which once again put his character up against the machines.
Unfortunately, there is no device invented that can guarantee a successful film, even today with all the sell-proclaimed marketing merde du taureau out there. All we can do when we find ourselves at such a point is sigh, proclaim “Cest la vie,” and maybe laugh at it, too…
NEXT TIME: A film where colony collapse disorder might have been welcomed, preferably very early on in the picture…
