Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis 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 in Paris. A group of tourists, whose paths are only occasionally crossed by M. Hulot, wander through the interchangeable glass-and-steel skyscrapers which comprise modern-day Paris. Visual gags occur with such simultaneous abundance that the film demands countless viewings for each joke to be fully savored. The film’s second hour, the opening night activities at an expensive restaurant that is not quite ready to open, comprises one of the cinema’s most masterfully orchestrated comic set-pieces. With every inch of its super-wide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion. (1967, 124 min, in English, German and French w/subtitles) 

Thursday, February 6, 7:00 PM