Playtime

While it was a commercial failure on its original release, Playtime is retrospectively considered Tati's masterpiece, his most daring work, and one of the greatest films of all time.Knocking down older houses in urban districts, developers rebuilt parts of the city and its suburbs and put up mid-century modern and brutalist blocks of glass and steel in their place.With his long-stemmed pipe, raincoat and hat, and his pants often too short, Hulot moves about somewhat lost outside of his "old quarter" of Paris, bemused and confounded by urbanization and technology.As Playtime depended greatly on visual comedy and sound effects, Tati chose to shoot it using high-resolution 70 mm film and a stereophonic soundtrack that was complex for its time.Tati also used life-sized cutout photographs of people to save money on extras; these are noticeable in some of the cubicles when Hulot overlooks the maze of offices, and in the deep background in some of the shots at ground level.Tati described the effect of 70 mm as follows: "What I find extraordinary is that the device allows the viewer to have a fuller appreciation of a mere pin dropping in a large empty room.Thus, when the character of Barbara arrives at the Royal Garden restaurant in an emerald green dress seen as "dated" by the other whispering female patrons clothed in dark attire, she visually contrasts not only with the other diners, but also with the entire physical environment of the film.Tati detested close-ups, considering them crude, and shot in 70 mm film[6] so that all the actors and their physical movements would be visible, even when they were in the far background of a group scene.Only working-class construction workers (representing Hulot's "old Paris", celebrated in Mon Oncle) and two music-loving teenagers move in a curvaceous and naturally human way.Some of this robot-like behavior begins to loosen in the restaurant scene near the end of the film, as the participants set aside their assigned roles and learn to enjoy themselves after a plague of opening-night disasters.Tati assured the film community that the original 70 mm negative remained in his possession, but after various re-releases in the decades to come, the longest cut yet released runs 124 minutes.Negative press both before and after its release soured audience reactions, and Tati's financial troubles led to bankruptcy when he failed to secure full US distribution for the film, compounded by the impact of May 68 in France.The website's critics consensus reads, "A remarkable achievement, Playtime packs every scene with sight gags and characters that both celebrates and satirizes the urbanization of modern life.