Play Time (1967)

Directed by Jacques Tati. Starring Barbara Dennek and Jacques Tati.

I don’t think that any viewer who is paying attention can possibly deny what a singular directorial achievement PLAY TIME is. With this film, a box-office disaster on its initial release, Tati re-created modern-day Paris on his own terms as a sterile maze of boxy skyscrapers, plate-glass windows, and beeping gadgetry. But while other filmmakers might be tempted to turn this setting (built entirely from scratch for the film) into an urban nightmare, Tati- true to the film’s title- concentrates on the funny little eccentricities that sneak their way in. This approach is ideal, as it turns out, as Tati’s hyper-detailed direction (his skill at engineering visual moments is even keener than Keaton’s) would run the risk of becoming stifling if it wasn’t done with such offhand charm. To describe any of the priceless moments in the film wouldn’t spoil them so much as it would sell them short, as Tati pulls them off so perfectly, yet so unassumingly. And in the midst of it all is Tati’s signature character M. Hulot, a bastion of old-fashioned provincialism, who would exist at odds with his hyper-modern surroundings but for his singular brand of good-natured aloofness, which translates surprisingly well to his new environment. PLAY TIME is a strange sort of comedy, one that invites chuckles of recognition rather than guffaws springing from easy payoffs, and leaves me with a goofy grin on my face every time I watch it. PLAY TIME is bravura filmmaking of the gentlest kind, which demands to be revisited- and seen on the biggest screen possible- innumerous times to be appreciated, and is sheer delight on each and every viewing.