Analyzing the Airport Scene in Jacques Tati's PlayTime
The film opens with a title sequence playing over a blue and cloudy sky, accompanied by jazz music then an ethereal and mellower song. It then cuts to a low angle wide shot of a modern, but nondescript office building that serves as an establishing shot for the next scene. A wide shot shows the office building from the outside and on the other side of a row of large glass windows, the viewer sees two nuns walking down a hallway. Although the location is still somewhat mysterious, this shot indicates that the scene may take place in a hospital or perhaps a futuristic/capitalistic nunery (based on the building’s architecture). Jacques Tati utilizes match cutting to link the previous scene with the next. The nuns who were walking through the hallway turn a corner into an atrium. In a wide shot with deep focus, we see the nuns continue through the atrium toward the background. In the foreground, a woman reminds her husband what he should do to take care of himself, presumably beca...