Today Playtime occupies a rather unique place in the history of French cinema, at once legendary and almost invisible, projected all too rarely. The exorbitant cost of printing a 70mm film has limited its distribution and the 35mm copies are in a miserable state. The videocassettes on the market cut the sides of the images, leaving a number of scenes off screen. In July 2001 Sophie Tatischeff and Jérôme Deschamps put the restoration of Playtime back on the agenda. Sadly, Sophie’s death in October 2001 pre- vented her from seeing the completion of a project that was very dear to her.
François Ede, Stéphane Goudet, Playtime, Paris 2002

Playtime is like nothing else that exists in cinema. There is no other film that is shot or mixed like this. It’s a film that comes from another planet, where films are shot differently. Perhaps Playtime is the Europe of 1968 filmed by the first Martian filmmaker, by their Louis Lumière! He sees what we don’t see, hears what we no longer hear and films in a way we aren’t capable of.
From a letter by François Truffaut to Tati, 23.12.1967

Critic Dave Kehr got it right: “The most visually inventive film of the 60s is also one of the funniest. For this remarkable comedy about man and his modern world, Jacques Tati attempted nothing less than a complete reworking of the conventional notions of montage and, amazingly, he succeeded. Instead of cutting within scenes, Tati creates comic tableaux of such detail that, as Noël Burch has said, the film has to be seen not only several times, but from several different points in the theater to be appreciated fully. Within the film’s three large movements, Tati’s M. Hulot goes from fear of his ultramodern, glass-towered environment to a poetic transcendence of it. A masterpiece among masterpieces, and certainly the last word on Mies van der Rohe”. One might add that in 70mm, the possibilities of becoming creatively lost in Tati’s vast frames are considerably expanded, reaching a kind of apogee in the extraordinary restaurant sequence, which comprises almost half of the film. And once a group of musicians begins to perform at this disintegrating establishment, helping to bring about a gradual social cohesion and praxis as the barely completed restaurant begins to collapse, the viewer’s gaze inevitably moves in a kind of improvised dance along with the various customers, joining in the communal activity. Significantly, Tati chose to accompany the end of the film with exit music, refusing to close the curtains at the first showings, because he wanted spectators to find the film being continued in the world outside the auditorium.
Jonathan Rosenbaum