This paper begins by introducing the term 'sound gag', based on the 'sight gag', and proceeds to argue that 'sound gag' is appropriate for describing Tati's use of sound for comic effect. The first part analyses Tati's use of sound; it characterizes his approach of sound as physical and indicates the minor role language plays in his oeuvre. Tati's use of sound is explained as a deviation from the classical soundtrack. In the second part the similarity between Tati's style and the cinema of attractions is put forward. I argue that Tati's background in vaudeville already alludes to the relations between his film oeuvre and the early twentieth-century popular forms of mass amusement, the avant-garde interests, and in particular the sound experiments of both the nickelodeons and the avant-garde intellectuals. The term sound gag, then, becomes a starting point to explain how Playtime could fail to address the expectations of Tati's popular audience at the time of its release, but in time won intellectual and academic acknowledgement by means of the recognition and re-valuation of the other levels on which Tati's films work.