PlayTime's Glass Door
In Jacques Tati's 1967 classic PlayTime, a film that resonates strongly with architects, Monsieur Hulot fumbles through a modern Paris, at one point visiting a bar and inadvertently breaking a glass door, a scene critic David Cairn analyzes in depth.
One may chalk up the architectural appeal of Tati's fourth feature film to the modern buildings and office interiors that Hulot, the director's doppelganger, tries to navigate. But Tati's astute commentaries on modern design extend to something as apparently simple and mundane as a glass door, which serves as a setup for a clever gag but also brings our perceptions of the material and its social connotations into play. Cairn's 4-minute commentary, "PlayTime: Anatomy of a Gag" posted by the Criterion Collection, analyzes the subtle jokes and layered meanings of one part of a great movie that, like French wine, gets better with age.