Reception
On its original French release, Playtime was acclaimed by critics. However, it was commercially unsuccessful, failing to earn back a significant portion of its production costs. The film was entered into the 6th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Silver Prize.
One reason for the film's commercial failure may have been Tati's insistence that the film be limited to those theaters equipped with 70 mm projectors and stereophonic sound (he refused to provide a 35 mm version for smaller theaters). For another, audiences worldwide had come to love Tati's films for the character of M. Hulot; his reduction to an intermittent, occasionally supporting role in the new Tati film came as a disappointment to many (Tati himself lampooned the phenomenon in an early scene in Playtime, when a rain-coated pedestrian whose back is turned to the audience is mistakenly hailed as Hulot). Others disliked its nearly plotless story line, while those who only saw a single showing frequently missed the intricate, sometimes simultaneous comic sight gags performed in the various group scenes. A final reason for the film's poor reception may have been its release date; while the film's satire of modern life may have been cutting-edge when first conceptualized in 1959, by the end of 1967 such themes were old-hat to film audiences.
Results were the same upon the film's eventual release in the U.S. in 1973 (even though it had finally been converted to a 35 mm format at the insistence of U.S. distributors and edited down to 103 minutes). Though Vincent Canby of the New York Times called Playtime "Tati's most brilliant film", it was no more a commercial success in the U.S. than in France. Debts incurred as a result of the film's cost overruns eventually forced Tati to file for bankruptcy.
Despite its financial failure, Playtime is regarded as a great achievement by many critics. Most have noted its subtlety and complexity: it is not easily absorbed at one sitting. François Truffaut wrote that Playtime was "a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently". British critic Gilbert Adair has noted that the film has to be viewed "several times, each from a different seat in the auditorium" in order to view the many small, tightly-choreographed sight gags by several different actors, sometimes displayed nearly simultaneously on the huge screen required for 70 mm film.
In 2012, Playtime was 43rd in the British Film Institute's critics' list and 37th in their directors' list of Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time.
Read more about this topic: Play Time
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