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 because he will be away for some time. Their conversation, in addition to the other actors walking through the atrium (such as janitors, men in suits, women in white uniforms) suggest that they are in a hospital. However, three women who appear to be flight attendants stand in the background, therefore the scene may take place in an airport.

Tati perhaps breaks the 180 degree rule by reversing the view of the atrium; in this new wide shot with deep focus, the previous foreground is now in the back and the background now in the front. However, Tati imparts important information about the location with this cut. What previously looked like (doctors’) offices enclosed by metal walls on the right side of the screen are revealed to actually be bathrooms. From this new angle the audience sees a door with a drawing of a person on it. At the end of this shot we hear a woman over the loudspeaker announce flight arrivals and departures, finally confirming the purpose of this building.

The next shot shows the female announcer at a desk on the left side of the screen as the camera pans backwards. Various passengers walk toward the foreground, including people dressed explicitly as a pilot and flight attendant. The whirring of a plane engine can initially be heard before the plane’s tail appears in a window in the background. The ethereal and mellow music in the title sequence coupled with the sky background alludes to this first scene taking place in an airport although we didn’t initially know that was the case.

It then cuts to a wide shot of a woman waiting in front of an elevator and then to a high angle extreme wide shot of an airport terminal with a couple food stands. A pilot and soldier have a tense exchange in the foreground of the terminal before the pilot walks towards the background, where we see a group of people emerge from a gate. The camera cuts to an eye level wide shot closer to the gate than the previous shot and passengers continue to emerge from the gate. The camera travels forward, drawing the viewer’s attention even closer to the gate, as a woman has her purse checked by gate security, a man with many bags is not checked, and the President appears surrounded by his security and reporters/photographers.