Filmed on a huge, complex set suggestive of the cool, vaguely dehumanising effects of technology and design on modern life, Jacques Tati’s masterpiece offers a low-key account of the bumbling Hulot’s experiences during one day in Paris. An office block of glass and steel becomes a boxed-in prison; a chaotic restaurant provides a memorably liberating opportunity for humanity to express itself.

“Tati’s ruinously ambitious masterpiece starts as a satire of modern architecture and becomes a strangely beatific celebration of the way people move through public spaces. A film about minor embarrassments and fleeting connections between strangers, it begins in alienation and builds to a transcendent vision of communal harmony. Gruelling labour went into each seemingly effortless grace note, as Tati the performer drifts in aimless bewilderment through the world that Tati the director obsessively controls. In Playtime, the movie screen is an idealised public space in which Tati’s people demonstrate the joys of being one-dimensional.” Imogen Sara Smith

“There are plenty of films that offer a critique of technology and modernity. Yet, with his distinctive, meticulous mise en scène, which exploits depth of field in an unparalleled way, and his peculiar ‘downgrading’ of dialogue to a sound like any other, boosting the communicative role of the image, Tati does so in a unique and radical fashion.” Cristina Formenti

“One of the most ambitious films ever made.” Jai Arjun Singh

Film	Year	Director
Playtime	1967	Jacques Tati
Wanda	1970	Barbara Loden
Werckmeister Harmonies	2000	Béla Tarr
Goodbye, Dragon Inn	2003	Tsai Ming-liang
Nashville	1975	Robert Altman
Black Girl	1965	Ousmane Sembène
EDVARD MUNCH	1976	Peter Watkins
The Headless Woman	2008	Lucrecia Martel
The Ascent	1976	Larissa Shepitko
SÅNGER FRÅN ANDRA VÅNINGEN	2000	Roy Andersson

Caitlin Smith

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