Watch PlayTime For Free

Truly Dreadful Film

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) curiously wanders around a high-tech Paris, paralleling a trip with a group of American tourists. Meanwhile, a nightclub/restaurant prepares its opening night, but it is still under construction."Playtime" is notable for its enormous set, which Tati had built specially for the film, as well as Tati's trademark use of subtle, yet complex visual comedy supported by creative sound effects; dialogue is frequently reduced to the level of background noise.The office set anticipated the dominance of office cubicle arrangements by some twenty years. The set was redressed for the trade exhibition sequence. Tati wanted the film to be in color but look like it was filmed in black and white. He succeeded.This is a great film. With or without the plot, with or without the comedy, it is great on the architecture alone. Few films really capture "architecture" in them, with only one other coming to mind: "Metropolis". That is how rare this film is, being the first of its kind in forty years.

Haven't done any homework when I was stumbling across my first Tati's film, and never imagined a film could be made in this way, a legitimate horizon-widener of film-making. The film commences in its befuddling narrative-void montages of variegated characters in the Paris airport of the vintage time, later, follows a group of American housewives-tourists embarks on their city route, first stop is a futuristic modern edifice of an Expo-esque site for a visit, while incorporating Monsieur Hulot (Tati himself), a well-mannered old man who keeps bypassing the man whom he supposedly should meet. After a short stopover at his upstart friend's newly- purchased home, Monsieur Hulot fortuitously bumps into the guy he had been looking for all day during a rubberneckers' gathering. The subsequent location resides in a nearly-furbished restaurant with a melange of patrons and staff (Monsieur Hulot and the American tourists included), the 45-minutes main course of all-inclusive gags, bloopers, transforms a hoity-toity eating place to a chaotic shindig, a sensible mockery and revelry of the vagaries of our humdrum activities. The film finishes with the tourists' return to the airport in the dusk light, and Monsieur Hulot's goodbye keepsake to one of the elegant American lady (Dennek), a silk kerchief, bespeaks the epitome of the metropolitan city. Basically, the film flouts any narrative-driven urges to underpin a normal feature film, the first half, viewers are being induced of an impression amounts to a loitering in a museum, with gigantic visual installations, emancipate a post-modern surrealism through the architectures, interior designs and costumes. The mirror-reflection antics have been ingeniously imposed many times to highlight several landmarks of Paris, the interlude of a transparent home design with minimalistic accessories is still avant-garde 45 years after. The restaurant bulk is more lively (both visually and aurally), a masterly farce encompasses minute boo-boos with miscellaneous players, every and each is done with a light touch but effectively strikes a chord with its resourceful wits and humor, and for certain, multiple watching is a must to extensively sense the virtuosity of all the arrangements, slap sticks and the esprit de corps, it is also the dramatic personae's playtime, in spite of that each and every one is bit part, counting Monsieur Hulot.Near the end, Tati culminates his love letter to Paris with a carousel-alike orchestration of vehicles lumbering around a circular parterre, an innovative amusement park metaphor renders immense pleasure through Tati's mojo.The film cost Tati 10 years in debt due to its commercial failure, with only 5 films made through his time, sadly it is a genius filmmaker and comedian who is way ahead of his time and should have been appreciated more. PLAYTIME is a marvelous feat, I cannot say if it is the case of Tati's other oeuvre since I'm plain a beginner in the territory, and it shines immaculately in the BluRay disc, I wonder it would be a perfect option to be enjoyed even you just leave it play in the background, each time you glance it, you will discover little gems there, profoundly witty or optically stimulating.

I'm sure everybody enjoys actual playtime, but don't think this movie is for everyone. It's long, experimental, and can be quite a chore to get through. I can certainly see the appeal and why it has been so critically acclaimed, but after 45 years of culture and cinematic progression, I feel that whatever relevance/edge this film once had has been lost, and many modern viewers will not understand it.The story, as minimalist as it is, features director Tati starring as Mr. Hulot, who has an important appointment in a retro-futuristic Paris but keeps getting lost and distracted through a long series of sight-gags and pratfalls. It's thin, and I believe it's spread rather far. It's the kind of thing Stan and Ollie would do in 40 minutes.Stylistically, this film seems to be ahead of its time. The photography is highly visual and works symbiotically with the slick production design (the film is a mixture of various shades of grey however, which becomes quite oppressive after a while). The dialogue seems to be mostly irrelevant. Tati himself never speaks, but other characters come and go without much point.Tati needed this film to be a success and after is flopped he was in debt for a long time. It's a shame that it did as Tati clearly lived and breathed this film for its entire production and cared about it a great deal. If it was too oddball for audiences in 1967 it just as niche for the ADHD audiences of today.A well made film, but it takes some amount of patience to get through.

Jacques Tati an actor, director and creator is the most elegant French director ever lived. He often combines slapstick humor with satire, superb acting with subtle narrative and elegant direction with beautiful cinematography. His production is very compact even that his career extends to the early 30's he only directed six films in 25 years. In addition to features he made a few short films. Jacques Tati's style was very subtle and elegant, he always reached to perfection. He was very ambitious and his visual masterpiece Play Time is his most ambitious film. It took about three years to film and it lead him into bankruptcy. In the gorgeous setting of Play Time Jacques Tati made a short film Cours du soir (Evening Classes, 1967) with the director Nicolas Ribowski. This is a proof how much effort he put in the visual scenery of Play Time and he wanted to take all the advantage of it.Play Time is often seen in the "top 100 must see" -lists made by film critics, historians and experts. But many give a word of warning to the people watching it. It's basically a film without a plot, without one main character, it's a very unusual film: "It is a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently. Play Time can perhaps be Paris of 1968 made by the first Martian filmmaker" Francois Truffaut. Many filmmakers have done plot less films like these: Jean-Luc Godard's Week End and Federico Fellini's Roma. But something makes Play Time different from these masterful films. Play Time on the surface seems crazy, but one who looks below the surface will see that it is geographically perfect like Robert Bresson's films for instance. There is not a single useless picture and every sound is a source of comedy to Tati.Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati's standard character kept turning into an outsider more and more film by film. In Jour de fête (1949) Tati's character (an early version of M. Hulot, though under a different name) spontaneously decided to help a town to arrange a festival, and he still was in the work life. In Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) M. Hulot was relaxing on a holiday and then in Mon oncle (1958) he finally was a completely inactive man, who was tried to put into the normal life by his sister and brother in law. In Play Time we don't know what M. Hulot is up to, we know very little about him. But what is certain is that he only runs into other characters by coincidence - he is a total outsider just as the other characters.The change of habitat was a common subject for Jacques Tati, which all of his films dealt with. Mon oncle ironically showed the mad modern technology, consumer hysteria and the destruction of old habitat. In Jour de fete he showed a town being americanized and in Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot he ironically portrayed mass tourism. In Play Time the themes of mechanization of life, globalization, the destruction of old core values and habitat have been taken to a brand new level.In Play Time M. Hulot is once again face to face against the ultra modern Paris. He is trying to deliver something in the glass wall postmodern maze, but loses his way from an officer and ends up in a grotesque trade fairs. Alongside with this adventure of M. Hulot we are showed the stages of an estranged American group of tourists. M. Hulot and the tourists come across with the most bizarre things one will see: Greek trashcans, silent doors and futuristic furniture. The tourists see the soulless hygiene, the futuristic airports, hotels and cityscapes, product overviews and delusions. The tourists see Paris as elusive and nonexistent: the reflections of the Eiffel tower and Sacre Coeur reflect on the soulless modern glass walls. This incredible consumer hysteria and futility of the world culminates in the metaphorical restaurant sequence where the decoration and the whole construction start to collapse.In Play Time Jacques Tati doesn't point the finger at the people, he doesn't blame us for this madness. The warmth Tati deals with his characters - to people in general is beautiful. Even that Jacques Tati shows the hurry inside of the people: everyone are hectic and living without a deep bond with each other. The people rely on coincidence, misperceptions and Tati seems to understand them and shows the sympathetic, humane side of the people. He deals with the destruction of environment and habitat but doesn't blame the people for it at all. He was a humanist who still had faith in humanity.As I mentioned earlier Tati always reached out to perfection and in Play Time the accurate work with photos and sound is brilliant, probably something no one else will ever be able to create. The visual and auditive gags are amazing - the richness in each one of them is impossible to see on the first viewing and I am really looking forward to see Play Time again. The film deals with the mechanization of life, the destruction of the environment, habitat and values. Play Time shows how consumerism and globalization have put unique places and societies to the same plain modern mold. Jacques Tati ironically portrayed the bad sides of market economy, capitalism and shows the hurry inside of us, but he doesn't take a direct political stand, he wasn't a very political person and the few political views he had were green and ecological. Play Time is a subtle life-enhancing, elegant masterpiece.