FILM: PLAYTIME
1967, dir. Jacques Tati

Actor/director Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apex with Playtime. 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 world, this time Paris. The film’s massive set, known as Tativille, was built in Saint-Maurice, in the southeast corner of Paris, complete with its own power plant, approach road, and two entire buildings whose amenities included a working escalator. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion, and one of the great masterpieces of postwar French cinema.