Mon Oncle Before Playtime?

I think it's a good idea, if only because "Mon Oncle" is an excellent film in its own right. It should also be a bit less of a shock than "Playtime"; it should be easier for you to get used to Tati's methods by watching a film in which they were not yet quite so radical.

The plots are not actually connected at all. Though they do have the same character, Monsieur Hulot, "Playtime" actually has NO main character, even though Hulot appears a little more frequently than some others. Both films, but Playtime especially, rely on you seeing the humour in a situation without it being pointed out to you. In fact, the chance is high that you'll see a lot of things that you missed in the films when you watch them a second or third or fourth time.

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My blog about Russian animation: http://niffiwan.livejournal.com/

i don't think they're connected
In the airport at the begining, an english woman call "Mr Hulot" ,a stranger dressed as him, maybe it's the only connection between "Hulot's holiday" and "PlayTime"

However, I have no idea how well the plots are connected between Mon Oncle and Playtime, if at all. If someone could help me out, I'd appreciate it.

It's not a question of plot. It never is with Tati. M. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, Play Time and Trafic are a kind of quartet about how much urbanization has changed people's lives in the 20 years after the war. With Les Vancances de M. Hulot you have folks on a seaside vacation in a rural, village setting but even there they can't escape the city, so you have vacationers constantly reacting to information coming in the radio about the stock markets, people making business deals over the phone and the like. People literally never have a vacation. With Mon Oncle you have a consideration about the families and lives in a modern city, the ghastly architecture transforming the earlier, older and more beautiful parts of Paris.

Seeing them in order and in succession gives you a better idea of the vision and philosophy of Play Time which openly looks at the consumerist, modern world where every city is the same, where you go on a trip is no different from where you left and the only fun is in chaos and confusion which the order and organization of the city ironically encourages and creates. With Trafic, Tati revisits the themes of the three earlier films and deals with the complex jungle and maze of modern city, finding the poetry and beauty still living alongside the noise.

So you should see them in order. Or see all of Tati's films...he made only 6. All of them are masterpieces.




"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes

I think it's a good idea to see Mon Oncle first because it's more intimate, with the family and the old town and everything. It was the one of Tati's films that was shown to us in film class in college. (All I could remember for years is that it's "the one where the house does everything for you, and every time they had company they turned on the fish.")

I do like to imagine that Playtime is a sequel to Mon Oncle, but that's my personal fantasy based on a mistaken impression I had back when I first saw it. At the end of Mon Oncle, Hulot was sent away from Paris, to be a salesman in the provinces, right? So at the beginning of Playtime, I assume that it's a few years later, he's actually done fairly well and is now called back to Paris. Of course one of the main points of this is that the creeping modernity has eaten the city -- there's almost nothing of the old town left. Now Hulot's really lost. The man he's supposed to meet is a co-worker who's also an old friend. He just got promoted and wants Hulot to work for him. If you watch closely, they do finally meet, while watching the construction project. The friend is the little guy with the band-aid on his nose, having run into one of those invisible glass doors trying to get Hulot's attention as he finally escaped from the building.

I also like to imagine that Barbara, wanting to see more of Paris, came back on her own and that she and Hulot reconnected (completely by chance, of course).

I about fell off the floor when I watched this again recently and realized that Hulot's other friend in the apartment has a flat screen tv and it's 1967. But I think my favorite moment is the "Golden Silence" door guy in the trade show.