Jacques Tati: A Democracy of Gags
Playtime
Film comedies have been around since the dawn of cinema. One of the most popular genres in the early years, it remains an easy route to box office success. Why? Because we like to laugh. Because we like to poke fun at the absurdities of the world around us. And, maybe, because we need cheering up.
Film comedies come in different forms. Slapstick, screwball, romantic, black, political satire, to name a few. But what tends to link them is how they are often treated as mere light entertainment. Not worthy of academic consideration.
Laughter is not a luxury
But as any student of film will know, comedy is a serious business. It helps us deal with the complexities of life, challenge taboos and connect with others. Laughter is a necessity.
Director and actor Jacques Tati, one of cinema’s standout comedians, seems to have faded from view in recent years. But for my money, he’s one of the all-time slapstick greats, who reinvented the visual comedy of the silent era. Starting out in music hall and mime, his perspective on life was informed by his understanding of how the complexities of a changing world often blind us to the comedy that provides an escape from its rituals. As he said, ‘Laughter arises from a certain fundamental absurdity.’
Monsieur Hulot, his bumbling, eternally confused alter ego, offered a commentary on the modern age. A symbol of humanity losing the battle against an increasingly Americanised culture and the relentless process of modernisation.
Hulot seemed to be a magnet for havoc wherever he went. Holidaying in a beach-side hotel In Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), he accidentally, but good-naturedly, causes chaos. In Mon Oncle (1958), modern domestic life is the target as he visits his sister and wrestles with her technology-driven world. The ‘house of the future’, designed to make life easier, becomes, instead, a trap. Literally, in one instance, as he and his sister are locked in the garage as her dog triggers the automatic door sensor.
Playtime (1967) was his most ambitious project. To shoot the film, he constructed a new city, Tativille, on a 49,000-square-foot lot. The streets provided a platform for a carefully calibrated commentary on the frenzied growth inflicted on Paris by the De Gaulle government. Characters wondered around like lost sheep, confounded by the technology that dominated their lives, until they started to fight back.
In Trafic (1971), M. Hulot drives a new camper-car he’s designed from Paris to a motor show in Amsterdam. Encountering, on the way, various comic obstacles. It’s a wonderful satire of modern car culture.
Tati’s films provide us with a never-ending series of sight gags. They also offer an ironic meditation on the foibles of human nature. The gentle social critique which characterises his films sets him apart from the iconoclastic filmmakers of the French New Wave such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.
Taking comedy seriously
But we shouldn’t under-estimate the innovation on display in his films. Nor his radical intent. He experimented with sound and colour, with set design, and created a visual language all his own. The dialogue in his films is minimal, except for background chatter. But human and machine noises are enhanced for comic effect.
His films, Playtime in particular, were a vehicle for critiquing the new consumerism, rapid urbanisation and social conformity that was disfiguring post-war France. Arguably, he prefigured ‘les événements’ of May 1968, the anti-authoritarian explosion of civil unrest in France, when students and workers protested against consumerism, capitalism and American imperialism.
The sense of alienation experienced by ordinary people navigating this strange new world is palpable in Playtime. But Tati also offers comedy and the celebration of people’s individuality as a means of resistance. He shows us how recognition of our agency as human beings helps us resist the pressures of modern life.
Hulot is the straight man in an absurd world. Umbrella in hand, pipe in mouth, loping, in that angular gait, through crowds and modernist spaces. He wants to be left alone to meander through life in his own way. His naïve subversiveness reminds us of the importance of believing in ourselves. Of the importance of being playful. And why comedy can reaffirm our faith in democracy. Talking about Playtime, Tati made the intriguing comment:
There's no star, no one person is important, everybody is; you are as important as I can be. It's a democracy of gags and comics - the personality of people regarding an architecture that people have decided for us to live in, without asking us whether we agree or not. In the end, we all win in the sense that we still talk to each other; if anything goes wrong, we're still partners, and some small people are still allowed to be important.
Tati acknowledged the influence of Buster Keaton in his development of Monsieur Hulot. He is one of the great comic creations. As Keaton said, ‘A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.’