Product Description

Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 09/05/2006

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15481 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2006-09-05
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 124 minutes

Amazon.com
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

On the DVDs
Disc 1 presents Playtime in an all-new restored high-definition transfer (taken from the film's 124-minute 70-millimeter restoration, from 2002), and includes the same appreciative introduction (by Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones) that appeared on Criterion's previous release. Film historian Philip Kemp offers astute analysis in a selected-scene commentary, and Playtime's international soundtrack can be heard as an alternate track. On disc 2, Au-delà de "Playtime" is a brief but fascinating documentary revealing the film's enormous physical sets under construction (and destruction), and Tati Story is a short biographical film that will prove useful to those unfamiliar with Tati's work and career. The remaining supplements are a treasure-trove of archival materials, including a 1976 segment of the British TV series Omnibus featuring a pleasantly low-key interview with Tati, and a rare audio interview with Tati recorded at Playtime's American debut at the 1972 San Francisco International Film Festival. Tati's script supervisor, Sylvette Baudrot, reveals little-known details about Tati's working methods in a video interview, and the disc also includes Cours du soir a 1967 short film written by and starring Tati. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

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

Requires Active Viewing Participation
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.

An Often Neglected Masterpiece
Tati's film is very beautiful. It has a visual look that is unlike any other film. Mr. Hulot, our protagonist is surrounded by tall glass buildings and big blue skies, a very beautiful, yet disturbing avant garde image. This sticks out in my mind as Tati's greatest film, the one that made him great and broke his career. I recommend that you see it.