In 1972, PLAYTIME made its U.S. debut at the San Francisco Film Festival. Director Jacques Tati attended the event and participated in a discussion about the film, moderated by program director Albert Johnson. The following are audio excerpts from that conversation.

This 2002 film by Jacques Tati scholar Stéphane Goudet traces Tati’s life and work through clips from his films and rare photos and archival material.

This 2002 film by Jacques Tati scholar Stéphane Goudet traces Tati's life and work through clips from his films and rare photos and archival material.

In this 1967 episode of the British television program “Tempo International,” filmmaker Mike Hodges interviews director Jacques Tati on the set of PLAYTIME.

In this 1978 episode of the French television show “Ciné regards,” Jacques Tati watches clips from his Monsieur Hulot films and talks about his role as both filmmaker and performer.

In this interview, conducted in Paris in 2014, film composer and critic Michel Chion analyzes the sound design in Jacques Tati’s films.

In this 1982 episode of the French television show “Magazine,” artist and set designer Jacques Lagrange pays tribute to his friend Jacques Tati through anecdotes about his collaboration with the filmmaker.

In this 1977 episode of the French television show “30 millions d’amis,” director Jacques Tati introduces his dog, Hasard, and talks about the canine stars of MON ONCLE.

Director Jacques Tati created this version of MON ONCLE for English-speaking audiences, to be released concurrently with the original French version. In it, the Arpel family members converse in English, while the townspeople around them speak French. In some cases, scenes were actually reshot so ...

In 1949, Jacques Tati used two cameras for JOUR DE FÊTE: one loaded with a new color film stock, and the other with black and white, which Tati turned to when unable to get the color film processed. Years later, his daughter Sophie Tatischeff found the color negatives, and in 1994, it was finally...

In 1964, Jacques Tati revisited JOUR DE FÊTE. For this version, he hired animator Paul Grimault to hand paint colors onto objects in the film. He also incorporated newly shot footage, all of it featuring a new character: an artist who appears to be visiting the town of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre dur...

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1967 • France
Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Georges Montant

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PLAYTIME. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-y...

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1958 • France, Italy
Starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie

Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law,...

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1949 • France
Starring Jacques Tati

In his enchanting debut feature, Jacques Tati stars as a fussbudget of a postman who is thrown for a loop when a traveling fair comes to his village. Even in this early work, Tati was brilliantly toying with the devices (silent visua...

Directed by Jacques Tati and Sophie Tatischeff • 1978 • France

Jacques Tati directed this twenty-seven minute short, documenting a Dutch-French soccer match, in 1978. He never finished editing it, but his daughter Sophie Tatischeff discovered the footage and completed the film for release in 2000.

Directed by Jacques Berr • 1935 • France

Jacques Tati and Enrico Sprocani, a famous clown who went by the name Rhum, cowrote and costar in this twenty-one minute short. Directed by Jacques Berr, it tells the story of a couple of city tramps who hatch a clever moneymaking scheme.

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1947 • France

This fifteen minute short, about a clumsy rural postman named Francois, was the first film Jacques Tati directed on his own; he also wrote and stars in it. Tati would reprise the role of Francois in Jour de Fete a few years later.

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1974 • France, Sweden
Starring Jacques Tati

For his final film, Jacques Tati takes his camera to the circus, where the director himself serves as master of ceremonies. Though it features many spectacles, including clowns, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, and more, P...

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1971 • France
Starring Jacques Tati

In Jacques Tati’s TRAFIC, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, kitted out as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’s highways and byways. In this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company’s di...