While France’s Jacques Tati is widely considered one of cinema’s most inventive directors, like many great artists, his audience took some time to collate. The initial release of perhaps his most ambitious and beloved film, Playtime, did not prove to be a financial success, resulting the director to go bankrupt and give up the rights to his previous films.
“I heard stories that he lost all of his money and that he lost his chance to make the next films and he lost his films, really,” David Lynch says in the 2011 documentary on Mon Oncle. “There’s a huge sadness there because he’s such a great artist. Now everybody says that, but when he needed this help, he didn’t get it, and that’s a sadness. That’s a terrible thing.”
It’s time to revisit Tati’s Playtime, as it recently underwent a 4K restoration and is getting a theatrical release in France next month (along with an incredible-looking Blu-ray set). To celebrate the occasion we’ve got a new trailer which will hopefully put the late director on the radar of more cinephiles. One can see it below, along with a portion of Lynch’s aforementioned interview (and a few words from a clearly broken Tati later in life) as we await news if it’ll arrive stateside.
Is Playtime among your favorite films?