The Architecture of the Screen

by Graham Cairns

Producer: Specta Films. (France).

  The last film of a trilogy that began in 1953 with Mr Hulot’s Holiday, continued in 1958 with My Uncle and finished in 1968 with this film, Playtime would eventually be considered the masterpiece of the French directing genius Jacques Tati. The most expensive and ambitious of the trilogy, it was a film that represented the finale of his cinematographic career and led to his economic bankruptcy.1 It was released in a French intellectual climate dominated by thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Jean Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Louis Althusser and Henri Lefebvre. In the world of cinema, this intellectual circle included Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut and, from a more art-house perspective, Guy Debord and the Situationists.

  Despite being operative in this fervent intellectual arena however, the work of Tati is more generally associated with cinematic figures such as Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and, above all, Charlie Chaplin. In fact, the analogies between Chaplin and the star of Tati’s trilogy, Monsieur Hulot, are as abundant as they are inevitable. As Iain Borden points out, Chaplin’s tramp and Tati’s Hulot are somewhat pathetic characters; “clumsy, distracted and humble to the point of seeming slow and unintelligent”.2 Out of place in the modern world, with its rationally designed cities and mechanised, commercial lifestyle, these stalwarts of times past show a certain perplexed indifference to the absurdities of modern life. In the case of Playtime, it is of course not only modern life that perplexes Hulot, but also modern architecture.

  As perhaps the most visible manifestation of a changing world, the modern architecture of the twentieth century found its way into debates in the field of arts, economics, social theory and, obviously, film. From a semi-social-theory perspective, it would be central to the thinking of Henri Lefebvre whose first book, Introduction to Modernity, 1962, took on the subject through a direct comparison between the historical town of Navarrenx and the modernist new town Mourenx, just a few miles away. Whilst not wholly critical of Mourenx, Lefebvre expresses a certain horror at the notion of thousands of “machines for living in”, organised in a geometrically controlled plan that is repetitive and infinitely extendable. “Are we entering a brave new world of joy, or a world of irredeemable boredom”, he asked.3 Ten years before the publication of his defining text, The Production of Space, we see Lefebvre questioning the potential social benefits of modern architecture.4

  By the time The Production of Space was published in 1972, these ideas had been developed into a sophisticated interpretation of “space” as an unavoidable manifestation of the forces of the capitalist mode of production.5 Seen in this context, the new town of Mourenx is interpreted as little more than the inevitable manifestation of the socio-productive forces at work under state capitalism. Such schemes are thus seen as the large-scale application of cost-effective manufacturing and construction techniques, designed to facilitate economic growth and profit; their status as a response to the need to house large numbers of people being little more than an additional contributory factor. Central to projects such as Mourenx was the controlled, rational planning of the city at an urban scale, as indicated in the 1938 Athens Charter of CIAM.6 Described by Eric Mumford as “the most important contribution to urban design thinking ever”,7 the consequences of CIAM would be defined by Lefebvre as the imposition of abstract space: “a space in which the division of labour seen in the capitalist mode of production repeats itself in spatial organisation at a city wide scale”.8

  Concomitant to this rational and factory-like approach to urban planning were moves towards cost and speed efficiency through industrialised construction, and a consequential aesthetic homogeneity9 that would become the brunt of Tati’s “architectural criticism” in Playtime. Without entering into a Lefebvre-like political critique of modern architecture, Tati, and his usual set designer Jacques Lagrange, set out to parody modernism as heartless and dehumanised. Situated in the outskirts of Paris, Tati and Lagrange conceived a reduced-scale replica city, nicknamed Tativille (Fig. 1). Occupying a site of some 15,000m2, it was a completely modular, rationally organised city in which the clear division of functions corresponded precisely to the urban planning principals praised and championed by the majority of modern urbanism’s leading intellectuals.

  Figure 1: Tativille. Jacques Tati and Jacques Lagrange.

  The design of Tativille’s individual buildings also took its precedent from the architecture of the modern movement, basing their design on the ESSO building in La Défense (París, 1963). Seen as quintessential international style architecture, the ESSO building was endlessly repeated in Tativille so as to create a city of homogenous and monotonous glass skyscrapers. Each one of these buildings replicas were mounted on rails so that they could be organised in varying dispositions for different scenes. Consequently, in Playtime, the viewer is presented with numerous scenes apparently set in different parts of the city but whose architectural backdrop is virtually identical. Exaggerating both the planning and aesthetic characteristics of the “international style” to the point of ridicule, Tati presents us with protagonists who get lost in a city without any definable reference points and, at times, even deliberately confuses the viewer.

  In developing his parody of this monotonous city, Tati echoes the ideas of the Situationists in their concept of Unitary Urbanism and, in particular, their strategy of the dérive10 and its concomitant activity, psychogeographical mapping.11 In Playtime, Tati reworks these ideas through two sets of characters: his protagonist Hulot and a group of American tourists who spend a few days in Paris on holiday. Throughout the film, we follow Hulot walking through the various streets and neighbourhoods of the city as he meets friends, bumps into old colleagues and watches the multiple events, activities, moods and atmospheres of everyday life in the city evolve organically. Simultaneously, we also follow the group of American tourists who do something similar. However, they go on a tour bus with a guide and, as a result, have a much more controlled experience in which accident is deliberately avoided.

  As we follow Hulot on his Situationist dérive, he does not seem to have any objective other than to absorb different atmospheres, experiences and architectures of the city. The tourists, by contrast, are always on their way to a predefined set of tourists destinations. They are taken to their hotel, to restaurants and theatres, often passing other tour groups on the same route. One of the most important stops on their trip around the city is a visit to a trade fair where innovative domestic products are on display for their excitement and delight. They marvel at carpet sweepers with headlights, internal doors that close silently, bins that take the form of classical columns and lamps that emit different coloured light. Consequently, the cinematographic psychogeographical map that their route follows and creates is completely different. For Hulot, this map is complex, mixed, nuanced and, at all times, unpredictable. For the tourists, it is one dimensional, boring, consumerist and always controlled. It is also one premised on Baudrillard’s “society of consumption”12 and a life defined by Debord as, “an immense accumulation of spectacles”.13

  The spatial and aesthetic uniformity that characterises Tativille and its building exteriors is not only parodied on an urban level, however. On the contrary, Tati engages in a detailed criticism of architecture at a much more intimate scale, at the scale of the interior. The interiors Tati and Lagrange create are ones in which everything looks identical: hotels, hospitals, airports and offices all becoming indistinguishable. Here, everything shines with the sparkle of the new, and is so clean and pure that it very quickly becomes comically aseptic. Seen in one of the film’s opening scenes, these characteristics combine to produce both a comic and insightful commentary on the modern interior. Set in some sort of institutional building, the scene opens with an image of nuns walking through the innumerable passageways of the set. Subsequently, we are presented with a shot of a uniformed officer crossing one of the building’s enormous empty spaces. Apparently lost, we also see a number of other characters who wander about aimles
sly in a building that has no distinguishing characteristics.

  From amongst these people comes a somewhat perplexed cleaner who, with pan and brush in hand, looks hopelessly for a fleck of dust to clean. Around him are other building users who sit in seats so far apart from one another that they condition a total lack of verbal communication. When somebody passes through the shot in a wheelchair, this empty institutional and clinically clean building acquires the character of a modern hospital, in whose gigantic waiting room reins a respectful silence. The confusion surrounding the building’s function is only resolved when the arrival of a flight from the United States is announced over a loud speaker. However, before this is resolved, Tati plays with the silence and size of the building with numerous sound gags; in this architecture of hard surfaces and exaggeratedly large spaces, even the most innocent or insignificant sounds, footsteps, a conversation or an umbrella falling to the floor for example, echo so much that they become the cause of great embarrassment as everyone turns to look at the paranoid culprit (Figs. 2–3).

  The most obvious observation being made in these opening scenes regards the aesthetic homogeneity of modern architecture which, as a result of the economies of mass production, applies one design language to multiple social situations, for example hospitals, airports, monasteries, etc. In addition however, Tati also parodies the dehumanised nature of this architecture. Within its spaces, humans are represented as uncomfortable inconveniences; the open plan of the building (possible due to new forms of construction) meaning that individuals sit at exaggerated distances from one another worried that their every word, action and movement will be heard and seen. In this new architecture, suggests Tati, the intricacies of what Lefebvre calls everyday life14 are seen as alien, and modern architecture is seen as producing noticeable psychological effects in its users.

  Figure 2: Foreground: visitors; middleground: cleaner; background: extras.

  Figure 3: The “architectural gag” 1: extended corridor space.

  Beyond these somewhat standard observations and criticisms however, there is a moment in these opening shots that brings into play more general socio-economic arguments around industrialisation, that is, potential unemployment. Tati’s cleaner is a very subtle reference to this. Helplessly looking around for a scrap of dust to clean up, he is a “traditional” employee whose “traditional” job is now under threat. The threat comes from new cleaning machinery (parodied in other scenes of the film) and a new form of industrialised, aesthetically minimalist architecture that discourages building users to litter or clutter and, in this film, seemingly “keeps itself clean”. In numerous ways, the buildings of Tativille are seen to alienate, confuse and disorientate their users. Once confused by the architecture around them, these users, in particular Hulot himself, begin to misuse it with comic effect. He enters a lift thinking it is an exhibition space for modern art; he turns modern leather furniture into a game of whoopy cushion noises; and, most notably, he turns the complete collapse of a modern decorous restaurant into an improvised site of playful jazz.

  These scenes offer us an alternative take on more key Lefebvrian and Situationists ideas. For Lefebvre, appropriation is a social practice in which the use of a building has been modified, often by individuals working outside any set or stated rules and regulations, in order to satisfy different needs.15 They thus apply a set of behaviours and norms of conduct on a setting designed with others in mind. Similarly, in architectural terms détournement, developed by the Situationists in the 1950s, would involve the imposition of alien architectural elements and personal activities on spaces designed with other ideas in mind.16 Although appropriation and détournement were envisaged as deliberate strategies by Lefebvre and Debord, in the hands of Tati they become playful, seemingly unintentional acts of misappropriation.

  In the film’s culminating restaurant scene, the architect and the builders are desperately finishing the fit-out as the high-class establishment is opening its doors for the first time. As the scene develops, the building breaks down into a series of comic tricks in which floor tiles stick to the feet of waiters, guests walk into glass doors they cannot see and lights intended to illuminate stairs fail, leading to numerous accidents and mishaps. Finally, a suspend ceiling that falls down. As the architectural setting falls apart, so too do the codes of conduct that reign in a decorous eating establishment. No longer confined to the norms preset by the codified event, and the architectural layout designed for it, the restaurant becomes a site of détournement as the fallen ceiling defines an impromptu VIP zone, the stage for soothing background music becomes a site for jazz improvisation and the eating areas becomes dance floors.

  In other scenes we get numerous subtler manifestations of the same thing, but we also get examples of how this operates in conjunction with Tati’s cinematographic mastery. Many of the film’s scenes were shown in long shot, apparently to partially conceal the aging face of the protagonists. However, the tendency to use medium or long shots also facilitates the compositional incorporation of architecture into some of the director’s comic gags.17 Filling his canvas with multiple actions, Tati creates visual jokes that occur simultaneously in different parts of the screen, and in different depth fields. One example is a scene that appears, at first glance, to be a street scene. An old gentleman in uniform occupies the foreground and looks onto the road in front of him when a passer-by, walking along the pavement, approaches and asks for a light. Comically, they gesture to each other as if they cannot hear. It is only when the camera moves to the left, and we see a window frame appear, that the location of both on either side of a glass wall is revealed.

  This visual architectural gag gives way to another in which Hulot and the uniformed doorman wait in the building’s entrance lobby (Fig. 3). Situated in the foreground, screen-left, they hear the echo of the Hulot’s associate walking along the long corridor shown in the same shot, screen-right. The joke revolves around the exaggerated length of time the affable, but nervous, protagonist has to wait. Not being privy to information visible to the viewer, he thinks his associate’s appearance is imminent. Setting up a game of point of view, architecture and protagonist, these contiguous scenes set the tone for the subsequent comic sequence, in which Hulot loses his associate and begins a hapless madcap chase through a functional and modular architecture that takes on connotations of an M.C. Escher painting (Fig. 4).18

  Figure 4: Escher like interior design.

  The chase culminates with a variation on the same type of architectural gags seen throughout. Hulot finally sees his associate on the other side of what appears to be an internal patio. Struggling to identify the glass door, concealed in the glass facade, he finally manages to cross the threshold only for his “vision” to be revealed as a reflection, the associate having been behind him throughout. The game of reflection and composition, to which we as viewers are party, is underlined further when we realise that what had appeared to be an internal patio is in fact the street; a fact that Tati has cinematographically concealed from both viewer and protagonist (Fig. 5).

  Figure 5: The “architectural gag” 2: reflections and transparency.

  The juxtaposition of the actions, expectations and behaviours of people onto the new spaces of modern architecture evident in these scenes, can easily be read as a manifestation of détournement. More conventionally, they are read as simply foregrounding the “inhuman” nature of modern architecture and, as such, fall in line with an interpretation of Playtime as a criticism of the Modern Movement at both an architectural and an urban scale. Whilst these readings are perfectly correct, and can be easily aligned with the work of Henri Lefebvre and the Situationists, by overlaying a more detailed cinematographic analysis of the film, we can reveal yet another layer to Tati’s architectural critique. The way these visual gags interlock action, camera viewpoint and architectural set reveals that Tati was not just thinking about architecture in aesthetic or even social terms. On the contrary, he was thinking about film through t
he prism of architectural design itself.

  As a result, the architecture created by Tati and Lagrange functions on multiple levels. As physical space, it is a location through which actors move or, alternatively, remain static so as to develop the film’s narrative. These physical spaces, however, also function as compositional cinematic devices in and of themselves. They frame views, define depth planes, conceal vistas and create an interface that reveals different spatial information to users and viewers. This goes beyond what would normally be expected from a set as a backdrop to action. Here, it becomes a physically integral cinematic component of the film’s most memorable and sophisticated scenes. By going beyond the standard architectural reading of Playtime, as an aesthetic and theoretical criticism of architecture on the one hand, and as an extravagant, ambitious and ultimately ruinous example of set design on the other, we find ourselves confronted with a formal arrangement of spaces and elements based on optical effects that work equally well in the cinematic form as they do when actually incorporated into built architecture. Consequently, we are presented with an architecture designed through the mental framework of the set designer, film director and cinematographer. It is an architecture that is physical but equally filmic, an almost fully hybrid form of cinematic space.

  Notes

  1Numerous works on Jacques Tati are available. For a general introduction, see: Bellos, David. Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, Panther, Vintage, London, 2001; Chion, Michel. Films of Jacques Tati, Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2002.

  2Borden, Iain. “Jacques Tati and Modern Architecture”. Film and Architecture II. Wiley-Academy Editions, Vol. 70, No. 1, January 2000. p. 28.

  3Lefebvre, Henri. Introduction to Modernity, Verso, London, 1995. p. 117.

  4In Introduction to Modernity, Lefebvre questions whether architecture can rise above the social and economic restrictions and requirements placed upon it or whether it will simply be another manifestation of the dynamic but controlling forces of the capitalist mode of production. See: Lefebvre, Henri. Introduction to Modernity, Ibid. p. 118.