The RAI of Jacques Tati

In his 1971 film, Trafic, Tati used the space of Amsterdam RAI for a few scenes. Except for a shot showing a boy cleaning a bus stop ad with the sign “Amsterdam RAI”, Tati doesn’t attribute to RAI any association with Amsterdam. Yet, it is an ideal place for Tati’s tricks with space. The modernist metal and glass construction with the high ceiling serves Tati’s aim for spatial amgibuity, which is a prominent matter in his films.  Moreover, along with his selection of colors, which were mostly limited to shades of blue, grey and white, it is a comment to modernist architecture, which Tati disliked, even though he never openly confessed so.
To enhance this spatial ambiguity, Tati experimented a lot with sound, as I mention on a previous post. In the case of Trafic, we may speak of Chion’s notion of acousmatic sound, which is used here. Acousmatic sound is “sounds one hears without seeing their originating source”, according to Pierre Schaeffer.  In a film, there are two different scenarios for acousmatic sound to occur. It is either acousmatic to begin with, and then its source is revealed (visualized), or vice versa. The first situation is quite common in mystery films, as the acousmatic sound maintains suspense, constituting a dramatic technique in instelf. However, in Tati’s case, the acousmatic sound (for examples the announcements coming from the loudspeakers of the exhibition), associated with the echoes produced due to the nature of the space, enhances spatial ambiguity.

Another interesting question we could pose is how Tati depicts the Europa-hal through his film. Can we talk about mere fiction, is it a mere film set, or are there documentary elements? It is known that Tati went almost bankrupt after building a whole universe for his movie, Playtime, in 1967. Therefore, we may deduce that since he probably was unable to afford to do the same for Trafic, he chose a real location as a movie set. In this case, this is a real autoshow in progress, which means that there are people unaware they are being filmed. It cannot be confirmed whether it was incidental or for artistic reasons from Tati’s part, but there is definite semblance to documentary, as it depicts a real event of its time. In fact, one may notice many similarities with the official 64^th autoshow held in RAI in 1971.

To sum up, it is interesting to observe how a location that is representative of the history of Amsterdam can develop other uses and obtain different angles. This proves how a space can have several identities depending on the person depicting it – whether it’s a filmmaker, an architect, an exhibition planner, or a simple passer by.

Rania Mouzakiti

Works cited:
Trafic, Jacques Tati, 1971.
Chion Michel, ´The Audiovisual Scene’, in: Chion Michel, Audio-Vision, New York 1994, pp. 66-94
Penz François, ‘Architecture in the films of Jacques Tati’, in: Penz, F. & Thomas, M., Cinema & architecture : Méliès, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia, London 1997, pp. 62-69.