Play Time

Play Time is Jacques Tati's fourth major film and generally considered his masterpiece. It was shot in 1964 through 1967, and released in 1967. Monsieur Hulot, and a group of American tourists try to navigate a futuristic Paris made of glass and steel high-rises, concrete roads and modern, plastic furnishings. Only the irrepressible nonconformity of human nature and people's love for beauty breathe life into the sterile urban environment. Modern industrial technologies, billed as conveniences, are represented as merely complicating life and interference to natural human interaction. The film is famous for its enormous, specially constructed set and background stage, known as Tativille, which cost enormous sums to build and maintain. The set required 100 construction workers to build it, and its very own power plant to function. Storms, budget crises, and other disasters stretched the shooting schedule to three years. Budget overruns forced Tati to take out large loans and personal overdrafts to cover ever-increasing production costs. As Play Time depended greatly on visual comedy and sound effects, Tati chose to shoot the film on the high-resolution 70mm film format, together with a complicated (for the day) stereophonic soundtrack. To save money, some of the building facades and the interior of the Orly set were actually giant photographs. Tati also used life-sized cutout photographs of people to save money on extras. 

On its original French release, Play Time was acclaimed by critics. However, it was commercially unsuccessful, failing to earn back a significant portion of its production costs. One reason may have been Tati's insistence that film be limited to those theaters equipped with 70-mm projectors and special stereo speakers. (...) François Truffaut wrote that Play Time was "a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently".