Playtime: The Modern Comedy of Jacques Tati

1/14/10 to 1/30/10

Tati's brilliantly composed comedies revel in the oddity of everyday twentieth-century life. Don't miss this chance to see masterworks like Playtime on the big screen.

Read full description

  • Playtime, January 15, 23

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • M. Hulot's Holiday

    • Saturday, January 30 5:30 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1953). With short Watch Your Left. See January 14. (108 mins)

  • Parade

    • Thursday, January 28 7:00 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1974). Tati returns to his music-hall roots, performing some of his most famous routines, in this rarely screened circus film. (75 mins)

  • Traffic

    • Sunday, January 24 4:30 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1971). A comic-apocalyptic vision of mechanized modernity in which humankind indulges in a perpetual love-hate relationship with its favorite pet, the automobile. (100 mins)

  • Playtime

    • Saturday, January 23 5:30 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1967). With short Night Class. See January 15. (153 mins)

  • Mon oncle

    • Wednesday, January 20 7:00 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1958). The wonders of an ultramodern house come in for classic Tati mockery. “Slapstick heaven.”-New Yorker. (116 mins)

  • Jour de fête

    • Saturday, January 16 6:30 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1949). Tati's first feature is a charming portrait of a rural village, where the bumbling local postman is inspired to American-style efficiency by a newsreel in a traveling fair. “Everyone loves Jour de fête.”-New Yorker. With short The School for Postmen. (108 mins)

  • Playtime

    • Friday, January 15 7:00 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1967). Tati's vision of sixties Paris is “perhaps the most madly modernistic work of anti-modernism in the history of cinema.”-New Yorker. “One of the ten greatest films of all time.”-Jonathan Rosenbaum. With short Night Class. (153 mins)

  • M. Hulot's Holiday

    • Thursday, January 14 7:00 pm

    Jacques Tati (France, 1953). This cinematic postcard from a seaside summer resort is “the most important comic work in world cinema since the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields . . . an event in the history of sound film.”-André Bazin. With short Watch Your Left. (108 mins)