Main Cast: Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Georges Montant, John Abbey, Henri Piccoli, René Kolldehoff
Release Year: 1967
Country: FR/IT
Run Time: 145 minutes
Plot
Arriving nearly a decade after Mon Oncle, Playtime continues the adventures of M. Hulot. More than a decade seems to have passed since its predecessor, however. The colorful Paris of Mon Oncle, last seen being slowly chipped away by progress, has now vanished almost entirely. Playtime takes as its setting an ultra-modern Paris where familiar landmarks appear only as fleeting reflections in the new buildings of glass and steel. Alternating between Hulot and a group of American tourists, Tati exploits the chaos just below the overly ordered surface of this brave new world. Again moving from one nearly wordless episode to another, Tati sends his alter ego off to make an appointment in a whirring, featureless office complex. He subsequently moves on to an exhibition of new inventions, meets an old friend at an aquarium-like apartment, wreaks havoc in a snooty new restaurant, and, again, almost falls in love. The most ambitious and technically complex of the Hulot films, it proved unprofitable and helped usher in the financial difficulties that would plague Tati late in life before later getting the recognition it enjoys today. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
Review
A miraculous achievement by any stretch of the imagination, Playtime was the movie that both sank Jacques Tati's career and cemented his critical reputation. Famously fastidious and exercising complete creative control (only Robert Bresson among contemporary French directors had as much authority over his projects), Tati spent nearly a decade between his previous feature, Mon Oncle, and this folly of a movie. Set in a hysterically hyperbolic modernized Paris, Playtime plops down Tati's iconic Monsieur Hulot in a bewildering sea of glass and steel. Ostensibly a commentary on modern life and the homogenization of urban culture, the movie resists glib conclusions. Initially, Hulot's wanderings seem to hint at a viciously satirical subtext. The movie's commercialized Paris is seen as an alienating, artificial place. As the day wears on, however, the city -- and the movie -- becomes warmer, more ebullient. The good humor spills over at a climactic party at a ritzy restaurant. Packed with movement and chatter, the anarchic sequence is the ultimate expression of Tati's dictum of "democracy" within the frame. The complex and rigorous mise-en-scéne gives the attentive eye several gags to choose from; foregrounds, middle, and backgrounds teem with movement. It's a radical approach that pays tribute to the audience's ability to see and think for itself. For a coda, Tati picked an appropriately ecstatic showstopper: the giddiest traffic jam ever recorded on film. The ideological flipside of the apocalyptic bumper-to-bumper freeway in Godard's Weekend, another landmark movie from 1967, Playtime's carnivalesque gridlock is the perfect culminating metaphor for a movie that sees the modern world as a source of both wonder and bemusement. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
Yves Barsacq; Billy Kearns - M. Schultz; Valerie Camille - Mons. Luce's Secretary; France Delahalle - Shopper in Department Store; Erika Dentzler - Mme. Gifford; Leon Doyen - Doorman; Yvette Ducreux - Hat Check Girl; André Fouché; Ketty France; Jack Gauthier - The Guide; Jacqueline Lecomte - Her Friend; Rita Maiden - Mr. Schultz's Companion; Laure Paillette - Two Women at the Lamp; Colette Proust - Two Women at the Lamp; Nicole Ray - Singer; Douglas Read; France Romilly - Woman Selling Eyeglasses; Francois Viaur - Reinhart Kolldehoff
Credit
Jacques Tati - Director, Gerard Pollicand - Editor, James Campbell - Composer (Music Score), Francis Lemarque - Composer (Music Score), David Stein - Songwriter, Eugene Roman - Production Designer, Jean Badal - Cinematographer, Andréas Winding - Cinematographer, Rene Silvera - Producer, Jacques Tati - Screenwriter, Jacques Langrange - Screenwriter, Art Buchwald - Screenwriter, Francoise Sagan - Short Story Author
