PLAYTIME

8 Original 1977 Re-Release 5 inch x 7 inch Stills for the 1967 Jacques Tati French Comedy PLAYTIME starring Jacques Tati as Monsieur Hulot, Barbara Dennek, Jacqueline Lecomte, Valérie Camille, France Rumilly, France Delahalle and Rita Maiden.

Playtime takes as its setting an ultra-modern Paris where familiar landmarks appear only as fleeting reflections in the new buildings of glass and steel. Alternating between Hulot and a group of American tourists, Tati exploits the chaos just below the overly ordered surface of this brave new world. Again moving from one nearly wordless episode to another, Tati sends his alter ego off to make an appointment in a whirring, featureless office complex. He subsequently moves on to an exhibition of new inventions, meets an old friend at an aquarium-like apartment, wreaks havoc in a snooty new restaurant, and, again, almost falls in love.

Nino Molossena del Monaco, who had bought the rights, and the very cans, of Tati’s film numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4, did not leave his property to mature in the bank safe where it was stored. He actually worked very hard to disentangle, the financial, administrative and legal constraints which prevented public showings of the films, and eventually succeeded in freeing Tati’s oeuvre from its chains. By 1977 Jour de Fete, Les Vacances, Mon Oncle and Playtime were once again available for distribution. Tati no longer had any direct financial stake in them , of course, but he had not lost any of his moral and aesthetic interest in his early works.

Del Monaco Films, Paris

The stills are in fine condition