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Back by popular demand—and perhaps by cosmic design—Jacques Tati’s PlayTime returns to the Lawrence Modern Film Series on Friday, November 14. After the laughs we shared over the summer with Mon Oncle, we couldn’t resist bringing Monsieur Hulot back for an encore. Our first attempt at a film series more than a decade ago began with PlayTime, so you might say we’ve come full circle—fitting for a film about people forever going around in circles through the modern world.

Jacques Tati didn’t make many films, but he probably created more masterpieces per attempt than any director in movie history—and PlayTime is his magnum opus. A beautifully choreographed, nearly wordless comedy of confusion and alienation in the age of high modernity, its core theme—loneliness, and the individual’s struggle to find his place in a world arranged around work, leisure, and the gleaming façades of modern architecture—still resonates. For this monumental, nearly three-year production, Tati built his own futuristic Paris—“Tativille”—and once again stepped into the role of the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, wandering among a host of other lost souls. Every inch of the wide frame—originally shot in 70mm—brims with movement and invention, moved briskly along by Francis Lemarque’s playful yet tender score.

A box-office flop when it premiered in 1967, PlayTime has since inched steadily upward on the critics’ lists, landing at No. 23 on the 2022 British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound poll of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. Time has been kind to the film—it looks and feels more contemporary with each passing decade. After years of studio-enforced cuts, original negative deterioration, and thought-to-be-lost sequences, the film got a 4K restoration in 2013, and we’ll be screening it in a Blu-ray disc that brings back the crisp detail, sound design, and vivid color of the film’s initial presentation.

And trust us: this is not a film to watch on the couch or on your laptop. The humor comes alive on the big screen and in the reactions of your fellow audience members… It’s a film you don’t watch so much as wander through—you’ll catch yourself laughing at gags hiding in plain sight.

Join us Friday, November 14th at the Lawrence Arts Center’s Microcinema for this special 4K screening of Jacques Tati’s greatest film, with an introduction by Lawrence Modern’s Tim Hossler, for whom PlayTime is a personal favorite. Show starts at 7 p.m. Run time is 2 hrs. 04 min. Tickets ($10) can be purchased in advance here.

—Tom, Bill, Dennis & Tim

Playtime trailer | Roger Ebert’s original 1967 review | Lawrence Arts Center tickets