Chapter 13 A Comedy That Belongs to Architectural History: Playtime, 1967

A Comedy That Belongs to Architectural History: Playtime, 1967 Playtime is one of the most discussed films in the architecture world.My friend Li Juchuan said: "It is a critique of modernist architecture and cities. The comedy effect of this film is directly produced by these modernist planning and design, rather than traditional body and language. People who have studied architecture will understand this This film is even more amusing because many of its plots have ties to architectural history."In this hugely expensive 70mm film, Jacques Tati created Mr. Hulot this time not on the seaside of the holiday ("Mr. Hulot's Holiday"), nor in the suburbs of the modern city ( "My Uncle"), but directly to Paris, the center of world consumer civilization.Although Tati was compared to Chaplin by critics, stylistically they were very different.First of all, in terms of plot narration, Tati abandoned the classical narrative mode, and just strung together a number of unrelated small events to achieve the final lyrical and comic effect. The screens of "Game Time" even allow the audience to have the fun of "multiple reading". The viewer sets the focus of the gaze.

At the beginning of the film, a modern building appeared, as well as people of various identities. It was not until the end that the audience discovered that this place turned out to be an airport.The uncertainty between function and appearance, as well as the uniform structure and dark gray tones that characterize all the buildings (sets) in Playtime left Mr. Hullo at a loss.When he went to the office building to find someone, he found that the entire office space was like a maze. Not only were the work rooms exactly the same, but he couldn't even tell the difference between the elevator and the meeting room.The city's excessive use of glass instead of walls also made Hu Luo feel at a loss.The most surprising thing is Hu Luo’s friend’s residence. The entire living room’s outer wall is a large glass wall, and the daily life is completely exposed to passers-by, like a giant shop window, and every home is like this.When Hu Luo smashed the glass door of the hotel recklessly, the waiter who opened the door held a metal handle and pretended to be courteous to open and close the door for the guests, maintaining the image of the hotel with glass that looks like air.Hu Luo's unintentional collision is precisely Tati's intention to break the material used by the Metropolis to flaunt modernity-glass.

Bazin called Hulleau a "brazen angel" whose chaos he caused was "gentle and free."Basically Jacques.Tati is an optimist, albeit with a nostalgic tinge of melancholy.Hu Luo strayed into a hotel that opened hastily before the renovation was completed, completely disrupting people's serious and crisis-filled dinner time, but the result did not embarrass the operator or disappoint the consumers, but turned the dinner into a carnival Carnival style, people singing and dancing until dawn.Although Paris was still crowded and noisy on the second day, it was more lively than the previous day - Tati's excellent use of pictures and background music turned Paris into a big playground: the traffic around the square seemed to turn a big disc , the girl behind the motorcycle seems to be sitting on a merry-go-round, and even the window cleaners turn the bus into an ups and downs seesaw.

Tati’s satire on electricity and machinery is also common throughout the work, especially in a scene where Hulo strays into the exhibition: people surround a new product in admiration, and this new invention is only installed on a broom. A lamp is turned on—the boredom of modern civilization is outlined in one stroke.In this modern civilization, human characteristics and identities are not important anymore. People only distinguish each other by clothing and signs on their chests.Hu Luo, who is incompatible with the "advanced society" and difficult to recognize, is pushed around and makes a lot of fools.

The use and combination of sound in this film is convincing and amazing. In his works, sound can always effectively add thickness and inner meaning to the picture.Compared with "Mr. Hulo's Holiday", the dialogue in "Play Time" is more vague (and the protagonist Hulo's lines are almost non-existent), so the language of the characters is turned into one of the "natural sounds", which is equivalent to All kinds of noise in the city.At the same time, the image of the characters is also diluted with the blurring of the voice, and the individual is no longer prominent. Mr. Hu Luo did not cause trouble everywhere, and was also submerged in the crowd.This also highlights Tati's extreme inadaptability to the modern metropolis and a worrying confusion.Jacques.What Tati is most praised by critics is that he always amplifies the sound of opening the door to the point of abruptness, "Through the reference of the sound, use the voice to suggest certain visual images", the sound of the door often confuses the audience's expectations and expectations. A screen is linked together.However, in "Play Time", he arranged a new product at the exhibition - a "silent door" made of so-called insulating material. At the same time, we see Tati standing in front of him, somewhat innocently worried and lost.

At this time, we can find that it is not Mr. Hulot who is ridiculous, but this increasingly progressive world