Playtime

Synopsis

Monsieur Hulot - often described as the inspiration for Rowan Atkinson's bumbling Mr Bean - was Jacques Tati's largely silent comical creation who often satirised the rise of post-World War Two technology in France. Here, Tati constructed a vast glass-and-steel set of an ultramodern Paris where our hero and a group of American tourists get lost in a maze of futuristic wizardry - but it's Hulot's all-too-human quirkiness that gets him out of numerous scrapes. Wildly ambitious, Play Time has been seen as Tati's masterpiece.