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Playtime

Playtime

Jacques Tati


  • Country: France
  • Year: 1967
  • Language: French
  •  
  • Runtime: 124 min.

Jacques Tati's comedy masterpiece follows his inimitable alter ego Monsieur Hulot through a Paris that has been transformed into a byzantine maze of glass and steel.

Cinematheque

Note: indicates Premium Screening.

official description

Frenchdirector-performer Jacques Tati, one of the cinema’s true comic geniuses, madehis masterpiece with the inexhaustibly inventive Playtime, which follows Tati’s inimitable alter ego Monsieur Hulotas he attempts to navigate his way through a Paris that has been transformedinto a byzantine maze of glass and steel, abounding in mechanical contrivancesthat tend to hamper rather than help the humanity they’re meant to serve. AsHulot wends his way in and out of this modernist labyrinth, Tati pokes gentlebut pointed fun at the modernizing pretensions and consumer culture of the ageof affluence, which is steadily creating a machine-dominated world that seemsto be pushing people to the margins—though as the famous conclusion reminds us, a mechanizedworld can also function as a merry-go-round. Laden with intricate, oftensimultaneous sight gags and hilariously detailed sequences of comic obstructionand destruction, Playtime invites usto intently scan the screen to discover the multiple delights buried within itsastonishingly detailed mise en scène.


This film will screen in December as an exclusive engagement in its original 70mm format, as part of the continuation of Essential Cinema.
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