Okay, so this is what I would expect a comedy on this list to be like — not some silly little disposable romp, but something subtle and strange and unique and deeply, deeply weird.

I really don’t even know how to describe it. It’s sort of silent-film-like, with very little dialogue that matters; but then sound effects are so utterly key to it that it would never work as a silent film at all. It’s described by critics variously as a satire and as a celebration of modernity, and both views seem correct. It’s a precursor to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, only slower and nicer and with less of a coherent plot… or maybe it’s a successor to Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera only with more of a coherent plot.

The movie comprises six episodes in Paris, none of them particularly about any characters, but all of which have in them either M. Hulot (apparently a character who appeared in more traditionally-narrative ways in previous Tati movies) or a gaggle of American tourists. Usually both. The sets are all strikingly modern, and look kinda gorgeous but also cold and sterile and imposing… except that this is played for humorous contrast with sound effects. The squeak of a glass door opening, the floomf of a chair’s pillow deflating, the tapping of shoes on a tile floor, the buzz of neon signs… you wouldn’t think any of that could get a smile or a laugh, but somehow it does.

I know I’m being more incoherent than usual here, but it’s really hard to capture the mood and style of the thing. It’s filmed entirely in long shots with no close-ups, and in almost every shot there are multiple things happening and it’s hard to even know where to look or what to pay attention to. It’s like a Richard Scarry book done as a movie, maybe? …okay, these analogies are getting less and less helpful.

Gently amusing, oddly beautiful, archly ironic, nearly balletic in its choreography, and impossible to describe. As is so often the case with these movies, I would never recommend this, because it’d be so very very easy for someone to describe it as “totally pointless, nothing happens, complete waste of time, pretentious bullshit” without being completely wrong. But I am wholly charmed.