Playtime (Blu-Ray) ~ Barbara Dennek (actor) Cover Art

Playtime (Blu-Ray)

Barbara Dennek (actor), Jacques Tati (actor) and Jacques Tati (director)


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Also Available in: [DVD]
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Synopsis

"Playtime," the third film in Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot series, finds the comedian faced with a high-tech environment. Whether he's in an automatic cafe, having dinner in an all glass house, or searching for a friend in an ultra-modern office building, Hulot's naive sensibilities make for some truly hilarious situations. He approaches contemporary machinery, furniture, and architecture with his unique brand of humor.


Product Description


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Review

Sight and Sound, 11/01/2004, p.74, "[E]nding in glorious fashion with a traffic jam that's treated as a slow-motion carnival ride."

Entertainment Weekly, 09/22/2006, p.81, "The trench-coated Everyman hovers on the periphery of astonishingly sustained slice-of-life long shots." -- Grade: A

Los Angeles Times, 05/14/1998, p.C18, "...Never was Tati's mastery of sound effects more inspired than in PLAYTIME..."

USA Today, 08/30/1996, p.3D, "...Anyone who savors the distinctively visual styles of Jerry Lewis and Blake Edwards will find a kindred creation in Tati's most elaborately designed masterpiece..."

Uncut, 10/01/2004, p.160, "This 1967 film was Jacques Tati's finest achievement."

Title Note

English dialogue by Art Buchwald.

Distributor Note

Jacques Tati's gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the endearingly clumsy, resolutely old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a bafflingtly modernist Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.

Release Note

Blu-ray Disc Features:

Region [unknown]
Widescreen - 1.85
Audio:
Dolby Digital 2.0 - French
Additional Release Material:
Audio Commentary:
1. Philip Kemp, Film Historian
Documentary:
1. Au-dela De Playtime
Interviews:
1. Rare Audio Interview with Tati - 1972
2. Sylvette Baudrot Video Interview
Featurette:
1. Tati Story - Biographical Film About Tati
2. Jacques Tati In Monsieur Hulot's Work - 1976
3. Cours Du Soir - 1967
Introduction:
1. Video Introduction by Writer, Director, and Performer
Interactive Features:
Scene Selection
Text/Photo Galleries:
Essay:
1. Essay - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Critic

Product Notes

Jacques Tati's spectacular cinematic art reached its peak in the gargantuan achievement of this film, PLAYTIME. Marking the third appearance of Tati's Mr. Magoo-like character, Mr. Hulot, PLAYTIME takes as its subject modern technology and its sometimes disastrous and always hilarious effects on the people living within it. As in most Tati films, a minimal plot (the parallel paths of Hulot and a group of American tourists), is held together by a seamless ballet of visual, aural, and conceptual gags. Tati constructed an enormous set, Tativille, rendering a high modern contemporary Paris decked in chrome, mirrors, and glass within which the surreal slapstick of PLAYTIME unfolds. Filmed in 70mm Technicolor, with sound recorded on a seven-channel stereo, the film approaches the city from a bird's eye perspective showing the complex yet abstract machinations of people and their technologies, with each character linked to the other and the whole ensemble dependant on the giant grid of the modern city. Objects, people, and sounds vie for the viewer's attention and all exert equal fascination and comedic power in the circus of Tati's modern life. From the airport to the high rise to the nightclub, Hulot weaves in and out of view, leaving a trail of bumped heads, offended sensibilities and curious glances in his wake.



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