We’re calling it now: Jacques Tati’s modernist comedy masterpiece will crack the top-10 in the next Sight and Sound poll of the Greatest Films of All Time in 2032. Right now, it’s poised tantalizingly at #23, but anecdotally, it feels like more and more artists namecheck this immaculately choreographed, mind-bogglingly detailed, eminently graceful film with each passing year.
Tati’s brand of nearly-wordless comedy reached its apotheosis here. Doubly out of time by the late-’60s, he successfully updates the stylings of Chaplin, Lloyd, and their ilk for the era of high-technology and automation. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness—keen to the the dehumanization of this brave new world but retaining an abiding optimism and curiosity—Playtime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.