Jaques Tati

Never saw any of Jaques Tati's movies, but he was referenced in some article I was reading, and found some youtube clips interesting. One of his themes seems to be disorientation in buildings, especially modern buildings:

modern buildings

Traffic

House

Play Time (1967), shot in 70mm, was the most risky and expensive work of Tati's career, and it bankrupted him. It took nine years to make and he had to borrow heavily from his own resources to complete the picture. ForPlaytime, Tati fabricated a set (dubbed "Tativille") on the outskirts of Paris that emulated an entire modern city. In the film, Tati and a group of American tourists lose themselves in the futuristic glass-and-steel of the Parisian suburbs, where only human nature and a few views of the city of Paris itself still emerge to breathe life into the city. Playtime had even less of a plot than his earlier films, and Tati endeavored to make his characters, including Hulot, almost incidental to his portrayal of a modernist and robotic Paris - Notes for Class Discussion