Considered by many his masterpiece, Play Time (1967), shot in 70mm, was to be the most ambitious yet risky and expensive work of Tati's career. "After the success of Mon Oncle in 1958, Jacques Tati had become fed up with Monsieur Hulot, his signature comic creation. With international renown came a growing dissatisfaction with straightforward scenarios centered around one lovable, recognizable figure. So he slowly inched his way toward a new kind of film, a supremely democratic film that would be about “everybody.” It took nine years to make, and he had to borrow heavily from his own resources to complete the picture. "at the time of its making, "Playtime" (1967) was the most expensive film in French history". "Playtime is the big leap, the big screen. I'm putting myself on the line. Either it comes off or it doesn't. There's no safety net". On the outskirts of Paris Tati famously built an entire glass and steel mini-city (nicknamed Tativille) for the film, which took years to make and left him mired in debt.
In the film, Hulot and a group of American tourists lose themselves in the futuristic glass and steel of commercially globalised modern Parisian suburbs, where only human nature and a few reflective views of the old city of Paris, itself, still emerge to breathe life into the sterile new metropolis. Play Time had even less of a plot than his earlier films, and Tati endeavored to make his characters, including Hulot, almost incidental to his portrayal of a modernist and robotic Paris. Play Time was originally 155 minutes in length, but Tati soon released an edited version of 126 minutes, and this is the version that became a general theatre release in 1967. Later versions appeared in 35mm format. In 1979, a copy of the film was revised again to 108 minutes, and this re-edited version was released on VHS video in 1984. Though Play Time was a critical success (François Truffaut praised it as "a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently"), it was a massive and expensive commercial failure, eventually resulting in Tati's bankruptcy. "Tati had approached everybody from Darryl F Zanuck to the prime minister Georges Pompidou in a bid to get the movie completed. "His personal overdrafts began to mount, and long before Playtime was finished," Bellos notes, "Tati was in substantial debt to the least forgiving of all creditors, the Collectors of Taxes." When he failed to pay off his loans, his films were impounded by the banks". Tati was forced to sell the family house of Saint-Germain shortly after the death of his mother, Claire Van Hoof, and move back into Paris. Spectra Films was then placed into administration, concluding in the liquidation of the company in 1974, with an auction of all movie rights held by the company for little more than 120,000 francs.
In August 2012 the British Film Institute, polled 846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors to find "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" and Play Time was voted 42nd in the list
Steven Spielberg has said he was paying a "very slight homage" to Play Time in his 2004 film The Terminal, adding, "I thought of two directors when I made Terminal. I thought this was a tribute to Frank Capra and his honest sentiment, and it was a tribute to Jacques Tati and the way he allowed his scenes to go on and on and on. The character he played in Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle was all about resourcefulness and using what's around him to make us laugh".
While on the set of Play Time, Tati made a short film about his comedic and cinematic technique, Cours du soir (Evening Classes, 1967), in which Tati gives a lesson in the art of comedy to a class of would-be actors.
In 1969, with reduced ambition, Jacques Tati created a new production company, CEPEC, to oversee his opportunities in movie and TV production.
In 1971 Tati “Suffered the indignity of having to make an advert for Lloyds Bank in England” in which he depicted the bank of the future as being dehumanized with money dispensed from a computerized counter. “The message of the advert was that however modern Lloyds are, technology isn’t everything and you’ll always be able to speak to a “friendly member of staff or understanding manager” in their branches” . In 1972 trademarked as Cashpoint, Lloyds introduced the first modern ATMs, the IBM 2984 into UK high street banks; they had similar functions as today's machines.
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