Playtime - Criterion Collection

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There's never been, and never will be, another comedy like Playtime. Three years in the making, French comedy master Jacques Tati's 1967 classic was an epic, experimental undertaking of unprecedented scale: Requiring the lavish construction of three entire city blocks of ultra-modern buildings, it was the most expensive French film up to that time, financially ruined its creator, baffled many viewers and critics when it was finally released after numerous delays, and is now regarded as Tati's undisputed masterpiece. Once again, Tati plays his comedic alter ego, the hapless M. Hulot (first seen in 1953's Mr. Hulot's Holiday), seen here as a befuddled pawn on a gigantic chessboard (metaphorically speaking) of modern conformity. He's simply trying to get to an appointment, but in the film's astonishing mock-Parisian landscape of antiseptic steel, glass, and plastic, Tati's resonant theme of contemporary confusion is fully expressed through meticulous use of framing and space--so effectively, in fact, that critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (in an accompanying essay) suggests that the film's dazzling "Royal Garden" sequence "may be the most formidable example of mise-en-scène in the history of cinema." With M. Hulot taking a back-seat to the film's breathtaking accumulation of visual details, Playtime (or, if you prefer, Play Time) rewards multiple viewings, revealing something new every time in its widescreen canvas of subtle gags and delirious eccentricity. Although journalist Art Buchwald provided English dialogue for the film, Playtime bears closer kinship to silent comedy, with universal humor and a musical soundtrack that's as essential as any of the visuals. Tati (1908-1982) never recovered from the film's financial failure, but happily, he lived long enough to see Playtime receive its much-deserved critical re-appraisal. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Tati's confounding masterpiece.......2007-08-22

Jacques Tati's 1967 film "Playtime" is often a paradox. Reportedly, it was three years in the making, and nearly a decade in planning. And it bankrupted its creator, who was insistent on re-shooting scenes and building enormous sets.
Did the gambit pay off? Well, yes and no. No, because it failed to meet box office expectations to cover the money put into it (the most expensive French production at that time). And yes, because it was later hailed as Tati's crowning achievement (who lived long enough to see it happen).
To the casual viewer, it is not an easy film to sit through, running at just over 2 hours long (while most comedies run at an economical 90 minutes). Tati's pace is often leisure, purposely matching the pace of his beloved character, Monsieur (or Mr.) Hulot, a polite but clumsy wanderer, often out of place in his surroundings. In fact, Tati uses Hulot sparingly in this film; the real stars, it seems, are other people and the ultra-modern buildings they file through.
On the other hand, if you are patient enough with Tati's film style, there are some brilliant filmmaking moments here. The look of the film is unlike anything I've ever seen: a city filled with shiny, metallic monsters (with lots of glass) and chic nightclubs. Tati's genius lies in the fact he can focus on things that other comic talents miss: the idiosyncracies of people as they go about their business. Tati unifies his main theme with the terrible realization that we have created these structures to box ourselves in, to isolate ourselves from each other.
There are beautiful visual gags to cherish here: Hulot accidentally shattering the glass door entrance to the nightclub..with the doorman carrying on the illusion of a glass door by moving the handle to & fro; Hulot spending the entire day looking for his future employer in a maze of a building (and never connecting); nightclub staff coping with faltering lighting, lose floor tiles and rowdy patrons (who reduce the place to shambles by daybreak); and a climactic merry-go-round of vehicles clustered in a street circle.
Whether you find Tati's "Playtime" tedious or terrific, there's no question about the man himself: he's absolutely brilliant.
The REAL big question is: When will Criterion package and release Tati's other films like "Traffic" and "Jour de Fete" for the American viewers to enjoy?

Playtime.......2007-06-28

Preceded almost ten years earlier by "Mon Oncle," this marvelous French comedy continues the misadventures of Tati's Chaplin-esque everyman, M. Hulot. The most dazzling and technically accomplished of his films, "Playtime" is a light satire on the mesmerizing and disorienting effects of technology. Filmed in 70mm on a vast set--an extant metropolis that Parisians dubbed "Tati-ville"--"Playtime" is a jaw-dropping spectacle that certainly reflects the director's wistful regard for simpler times. Still, the carnival-like sequence in the nightclub and the symphonic traffic jam that close the film feel warm, fun, and somehow exquisitely human.

Requires Active Viewing Participation.......2007-01-03

This is a singular masterpiece in film making but totally unlike anything, even for it's day. By today's attention deficit disorder standards, this film is really really odd. But no doubt it is a masterpiece if the viewer is willing to put the effort in to catch all the nuances because this is a film of nothing but nuances. Tati himself is just one of many participants.

There is a plot of sorts dealing with a group of female American tourists and the one women who is the odd duck among them. She meets Tati and they spend the night together dancing at a night club and see in the dawn at a coffee shop. Various bits of business are constantly swirling around them and you could view this picture 10 times before seeing everything. There are many jokes but they are gentle visual puns. Don't expect belly laughs, just a wry but amazing view on modern life.

As is standard practice for Criterian these days the extras on disc two are spectacular. The documentaries on Tati's life and this film are brilliant and helped me understand his art and this film much better.

A gentle film with brilliant use of wide screen (this film would make no sense pan and scan) you need to fall into the picture to enjoy it. But there is an endless wealth of material to enjoy.

Tati's masterpiece....one of the greatest French films ever..........2006-12-21

This is Jacques Tati's masterwork. I have yet to see it in a theater (I should, considering it was shot in 70mm), but the DVD is spectacular. I had the original Criterion edition, but despite the fact I could have sold it on Ebay for a ridiculous amount of cash, I didn't, because I love this film. This film is really a marvel, because it's so visually and aurally complex, that you can watch it over and over again, and see many new things each time. It's a completely different film every time. The film has to be seen on DVD or at the theater, because of the immaculate detail. Everyone that appears in the film is actually doing something. There are no superfluous extras just walking around. Some actors whom you may think are extras appear later in the film and become main characters. It seems that Tati himself gave everyone direction. The final half of the film (the destruction of the restaurant) is one of the great setpieces in cinema history. It's brilliantly assembled. Tati was the Kubrick of France in many ways. He only completed 6 features (Jour de Fete, Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, Playtime, Trafic, and Parade), and a few shorts. His attention to detail here is just astounding. The city here is an actual set built for the film, which the press dubbed "Tativille". Sadly, the film went way over budget (Tati's perfectionism, bad weather which destroyed much of the set), and was a major commercial failure. This drove Tati into bankruptcy. He made only 2 films afterwards (the lethargic Trafic and the sweet but slight Parade). But Playtime is one of the greatest films ever made, and Tati's masterpiece. That's how good this film is.

Whether it's a masterpiece or a failure or both, Playtime remains an essential Tati movie.......2006-11-02

Why was Playtime a failure, sending Jacques Tati into bankruptcy and costing him control over his life's work of films? His previous film, My Uncle, had been a commercial and artistic success. M. Hulot's Holiday and Jour de Fete had gained Tati world-wide recognition and respect. He had become recognized as one of the few authentic geniuses of film.

Watch Playtime and I think you'll find the answer. Tati in his earlier films placed Hulot in situations where we could empathize with him. Hulot was an innocent. As we came to like him, we also came to like the people he encountered. Even with their pretensions and idiosyncrasies, we could see something of ourselves in them. Tati might be holding up a mirror for us to look in, but M. Hulot was such a gentle companion that we smiled as we recognized ourselves.

With Playtime, there is little Hulot. Instead, we have Tati's view on all sorts of social and cultural issues, from the sterility he saw in much of modern life to modern architecture, group behavior, impersonal offices, loneliness, boorishness and American tourists. We're observers, and our job is to share Tati's viewpoint. Hulot, now middle-aged, has become a minor player in the film. In his earlier movies, Tati was careful to give us small numbers of people with whom, along with Hulot, we could come to know. In My Uncle, for instance, it was essentially one family and one modern home, along with Hulot's own apartment and his neighbors. In M. Hulot's Holiday, it was a small seaside hotel and its guests. With Playtime, we have a large, impersonal office building, all glass and right angles, filled with people -- employees, visitors, exposition guests, customers. Then we have an apartment building with huge curtain-less windows allowing the pedestrians to look right in, and we're among the pedestrians. Then we have a nightclub filled with customers, waiters and managers. There is little opportunity to get to know any of these people, much less develop affection for them.

However, as with all his movies, Tati fills Playtime with streams of intricate and carefully developed comic situations (although comic is too broad a term), often that build from small happenings we've barely noticed. There is only sporadic and incidental dialogue, but sound effects are vital to the movie, as subtle and amusing as what we see.

As sterile and unattractive as Tati makes the airport, the office building, a convenience store and the apartment, there are such odd and subtle sights as the bobbing wimple wings on two nuns, a floor sweeper staring at a booted officer, Hulot suddenly sliding down a floor, glass windows and doors impossible to tell if they're there or not, a table lamp that dispenses cigarettes, strange-looking and wobbling food at a self-service counter...and the list simply goes on. And it's not just one thing at a time. Tati can fill a screen with all sorts of amusing occurrences, some happening in the foreground, some in back, some at the sides.

The last hour of the movie takes place in a modern nightclub, the Royal Garden, which has just opened and is barely ready for its customers. A dance floor tile sticks to a maitre d's shoe, a fish is ostentatiously finished table-side by a waiter...then finished again and again by mistake while the two customers ooh and ah. A bow tie falls in the sauce. A bus-load of tourists suddenly appear. When Hulot manages to accidently shatter one of the glass doors to the restaurant, it is a culmination to all those glass walls we've been looking through and walking into. The follow-up gag with the round door opener is almost worth the price of the DVD. As the modern restaurant gradually disintegrates around us, Tati finally begins to ease up on personal viewpoints and let's us simply enjoy the sight of people becoming more like people. And that, I suspect, is the point Tati wanted to make. In an odd sort of way, the last ten minutes evoke the humor and warmth of previous Tati movies...a packed traffic circle with all the cars moving slowly together; a father taking a toy horn from his little boy and blowing it, too; the bittersweet last look at Hulot walking past a bus where a young woman he met at the nightclub is being taken to the airport with her tourist group.

If you like Tati's viewpoint on the impersonalization of modern society, you'll probably like Playtime. Some critics call it his masterpiece. If you like Tati, I think Playtime is essential, if only to understand what happened to him. The movie is an idiosyncratic and gallant failure, in my view, and much too long. Still, I'd rather watch Playtime than most of what passes as genius in films today.

The new Criterion release looks very good. This edition has several extra features including supplements about Tati and an audio interview with him. The case also contains an insert with an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum, identified as a film critic.

Average customer rating:

cheaper price
The best of it's kind ... but, wait, there is no other of it's kind! Also, there are 2 Criterion versions.
City of Mirth
A meticulous creation of a proto-reality...
two hours i am never getting back

Playtime - Criterion Collection
Starring: Luce Bonifassy , Valérie Camille , Evy Cavallaro , France Delahalle , and Barbara Dennek
Manufacturer: Criterion
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ASIN: B00005B1ZM
Release Date: 2001-05-22

Description

Jacques Tati, the choreographer of the charming, comical ballet that is Playtime, casts the endearingly clumsy Monsieur Hulot as the principal character wandering through modernist Paris. Amid the babble of English, French and German tourists, Hulot tries to reconcile the old-fashioned ways with the confusion of the encroaching age of technology.

Customer Reviews:

cheaper price.......2006-03-31

if you are trying to find this movie without paying an arm and a leg, try brazildvd.com they have it new on dvd for under 30.00 . this is a great film to own just not 100 dollar amazing but for 30 yes.

The best of it's kind ... but, wait, there is no other of it's kind! Also, there are 2 Criterion versions........2005-12-19

What makes this film truly a gem, is the fact that there isn't a single film in movie history that you can compare it to. Probably the closest would be his last appearance as Monsieur Hulot, in Traffic. In Playtime, Hulot's 3rd appearance, it's just Tati wandering around a mechanized Paris, running into hinderances along the way. This a a charming comedy, and not a laugh out loud one. It does have it's funny moments, and you really need a second or even third viewing to appreciate all that is appearing on screen. I love just popping this one in, and letting it play while I am doing things around the house. With it not having a plot, you can jump in at any time, and catch glimpses of it here and there without missing much. It's probably the only movie of it's kind you can do that with.

This film literally emptied Tati's pocket's getting it made with the costly sets and hundreds of extras. However, he pressed on and got it completed, much to the film going world's benefit. It's a pleasant trip down a the lane of a film maker's mind we will probably never come close to gazing into again. There just aren't any films around like this anymore, as the days of sight gags, and silent comedians are long over. Hopefully it will get re-issued soon, either by Criterion or another company. It deserves to be in print, and the UK apparently doesn't have any licensing issues, as it's in current release over there.

As far as the debate over the aspect ratio is concerned, I do know this: I had a Toshiba DVD player at one time, which had a unique feature of zooming out, as well as zooming in. When I zoomed out, it made the film look even wider screen, but the important factor was, that it showed me a few millimeters more on either side, which I couldn't see on my other TV and DVD player. In a film like this, which is full of long shots, and lots of people and things happening in every corner, it was a benefit to have that feature. That was of course, until that DVD player of mine broke. So there is actually more on the transfer, it's just that with every TV and DVD player cutting off a tiny bit on the sides, you lose a little something. I wanted to see this film when it ran on the big screen for a limited time about 2 years ago, but it only hit select cities and didn't come near me. Seeing it in the theater must be a huge treat!

One tip if you are searching out the Criterion out of print version is to make sure you ask who you are buying it from, whether it says first printing or second printing in small print on the lower back of the case. You want the second printing. The DVD is rare to find either way, but the second printing is much, much rarer, as you either had to trade your first printing into Criterion to get the corrected version, or find it in the stores, if they even stocked the second one prior to it going out of print. The difference is the first version had an incorrect aspect ration on the Terry Gilliam interview and the Tati short film. They both appeared squished into widescreen format, when they should have been full screen.

City of Mirth.......2005-07-21

Jacques Tatischeff changed his name to Jacques Tati in the 1920's when he worked in the French Music Halls. In the early 1950's, he began to develop a character that would ultimately become his alter-ego-Mr. Hulot. Tati sculpted Hulot from the toes up-an umbrella carrying, pipe smoking raincoat-clad funny hat-wearing Everyman in argyle socks. As he moved he defied gravity-almost off balance as he lurched about-yet graceful as a dancer.

PLAYTIME was the third in the Hulot series. He bankrupted himself shooting it in 70mm on a stretch of land he had to lease-constructing a whole city set-which came to be called Tativille. He wanted the polished chrome and glass look for all the buildings-and could not find them consistently in the real Paris. Tati took great artistic chances. Dialogue was incidental-almost feeling improvised. He shot it in all medium shots, mostly without specific dialogue-as a tip of the hat to Buster Keaton and silent films. The zany action had to carry the plot-similar to the recent French Anime-THE TRIPLETS OF BELLVILLE (2003).

He postulated that the future would be a place of shiny surfaces and deadly conformity-just huge towers of ticky-tacky that would all look the same. He suggested that modern society is trying to delete or destroy all the vestiges and symbols of the past. In this film, one only sees the landmarks in Paris as reflections in great glass windows. The complex and long Royal Nightclub Scene became a masterwork of mayhem-choreographed precisely. We were bombarded with multiple sight gags that all happened rapidly-even simultaneously. Tati paved the way for directors Richard Lester and Robert Altman to handle crowd scenes effectively-brimming with overlapping action and humorous asides.

It took some energy to watch this film carefully. It could require multiple viewings to totally appreciate all that occurred within the frame. Tati completely reinvented comedy within silence-and made us love it. His routines ranged from broad slapstick to subtle bits of business with props and people. He taught us that there is a plethora of unintended humor surrounding us-if we would only pay attention to it-and take the trouble to allow ourselves to be touched and tickled by it.

A meticulous creation of a proto-reality..........2005-01-20

I haven't reviewed a film on Amazon.com (or anywhere else, for that matter) in years, but I absolutely had to respond to the writer of the critique who issued the idea that "Playtime isn't a comedy... would prefer a Coen Bros flick... etc."

I'm as big a Coen Bros fan (sans the last few movies, of course) as anyone else, but to compare Tati to Joel and Ethan is downright nonsense, no matter if you're a film student, filmmaker, or miscellaneous! Derf!

PLAYTIME, much like the rest of Tati's oeuvre (especially the Hulot series) isn't so much about comedy (at least not the ha-ha-hehe comedy... if anything, it's a more subtle Keaton/Chaplin comedy-of-manners type of trip), as it is the magnificent SPECTACLE of his creation of a whole reality based largely in our own.

If anything, compare PLAYTIME not to a Coen Bros flick, but maybe Altman's NASHVILLE. What makes Tati's masterwork such an awe-inspiring experience for the senses is that he has developed and cultivated his very own Paris... and not the silly "this is a movie" dreamy, etherial romanticized Paris of AMELIE, but rather a more grounded-still-beatific-at-its-best Paris that could exist with the right set of eyes (as opposed to the right set of CGI, filters, etc.)

Yes, Tati used his own visual trickery and the like, but again, it was more of a playful jaunt in contrast to a simple click of a button.

This movie is amazing in that you are watching a reality constructed, almost as it seems, just for you (yes, YOU!!) It's a strange feeling, to be sure. And, yes, you might not be falling off your chair with laughter, but you smile and know that, "Hey, that's pretty nifty."

Then you kinda shut your mouth and gaze in a rather lackadaisical, halcyon fashion at the wonder of "huh..."

two hours i am never getting back.......2004-06-08

What a horrendous experiment in comedy...if you like Jerry Lewis, I guess you'll love this travesty of a film. If you are a film snob, you will love it. Personally, as neither, I am grossly disappointed and just really didn't get "the joke." It was trite and dull....there was no point....the plot...technology encroaching on humanity....well, good try, but again not for me. If I am looking for a laugh, I will watch a good Coen brothers film.

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