I recently re-watched Jacques Tati's Play Time.
Tati is simply one of the best directors (like Keaton, Chaplin...) that ever mastered the "visual comedy", based on an absent or a limited dialogue.
Play Time belongs to those films (like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Lean's Lawrence of Arabia) that can never be given justice on DVD, simply because they’re prestigiously shot in 70 mm (unlike the usual 35 mm), they have to be seen on wide screens.
In Play Time, Tati's cynical view of the European urban impersonal civilization is extreme, and is wonderfully translated on the screen (dysfunctional huge machines, similar variations of skyscrapers, cars....), Paris is turned into a giant cube of steel and glass (ironically the only time the Eiffel Tower would show in the movie is through a quick reflection while a glass door is opened, hilarious!!). He acts in his famous persona Mr Hulot.
Tati put all of his wealth into Play Time's production, the city he constructed for the setting was called Tativille, still the movie failed to have any success when released... It was the film he always longed to make, yet it is the very film that practically ended his carrier (after filing bankruptcy).
This is the trailer and a scene from the city at night
