This article was written by Anthony Miglieri.
It’s that time of year in Chicago.
The heat: 80 degrees or higher. The shorts: seven inches or shorter. The resolution: At least 12K.
It could only be the Summer of 70mm.
The Music Box Theatre’s annual ode to our favorite filmstock began Thursday, August 8, and runs through Sunday, August 11. The Searchers (1956) opened the festival with Monument Valley horizons stretched across the 31-foot screen. North by Northwest (1959) will yank us above the U.N. Building to watch Cary Grant scamper into a cab en route to Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. Streets of Fire (1984) will shove us into a greaser dystopia that looks a lot like Lower Wacker Drive.
But with this iteration of the venue's recurring 70mm Film Festival, I most look forward to revisiting Tativille, the fictionalized Paris of Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967). According to the Music Box, this 70mm print is the only one in the United States, and the theater hasn’t shown it in about a decade. Come for the exclusive opportunity; stay for Tati’s titanic portrait of modern-day bustle.
The film opens with a heavenly blue sky and a godlike monolith presiding over all. It’s the latest skyscraper. As the chorus of angels fades, a pair of nuns trots through this urban place of worship. Yes, Tati finds modern society ridiculous and alienating…but he also thinks it’s pretty funny.
In the French filmmaker’s only slightly exaggerated vision of the '60s, form rules over function with an aluminum fist. Walls gleam; windows appear invisible; doors slam “in Golden Silence.” If you have a problem, there’s a button to solve it. But the button might not have a label, and if it does, it’s probably in the wrong language. Playtime’s race of people cannot tolerate a moment of boredom and demand a gadget for every daily inconvenience (a mid-century sampler for the ills that plague us today).
Just as the attention spans have shrunk, so has the world. Where once existed only trains, horses, or—God forbid—feet, there is now a plane ready to whisk anyone away to the other side of Earth. When U.S. tourist Barbara (Barbara Dennek) photographs the purest Parisian in the film, a woman selling flowers in the street, the American edits out all of the authenticity. “That’s really Paris,” remarks the proto-Instagrammer.
However, one entity rules over all in Playtime. That’s the Drone, the indistinct, mechanical buzz that hovers over every event. This is the sound of unchecked human ingenuity, of machines slowly replacing our own thoughts—another familiar trend in 2024. Thankfully, this is only one of Playtime’s memorable noises. Only Tati could etch into my mind the sounds of a chair inflating, black pepper cracking, or batteries dropping down a vacuum tube.
In the most mundane showstopper I can remember, Tati offers a nearly 10-minute sequence in which Monsieur Hulot (Tati) and his old pal sit and watch some TV. With only passing cars on the soundtrack, the scene proceeds in pantomime. Sitting outside the apartment, the camera pulls back to reveal the next three units, all containing people watching television in the exact same manner. This is urban isolation at its funniest.
Tati feels these neighbors would probably enjoy each other’s company, even just to stare at the screen with each other. But humans love their walls too much. Little does Hulot know that the very person he has spent the last hour looking for is sitting a few feet away from him next door.
Hulot finally finds his man while walking down the street. Without walls, screens, or any other partitions between them, the men share a moment of connection. The end of the film comes to the same conclusion: Royal Garden, the new fine dining spot, only succeeds after it literally collapses. Once the contemporary, cheap facade comes down, so do the customers’ airs. They embrace the imperfection and humanity in their too-perfect world.
To my knowledge, this movie features not a single closeup; there are so many wide shots that the medium shots feel shocking in their detail. On the Music Box’s vast screen, which last month had me fixated on the background patrons of GoodFellas’ (1990) Bamboo Lounge in 35mm, I cannot imagine what viewers will unearth in Playtime.
This masterwork occupies a club with Apocalypse Now (1979). Like Coppola, Tati fills his film with all it can muster. To watch movies like these is to witness the art form on the verge of rupture. When possible, see ‘em big.
Tickets to the Summer of 70mm are still available on musicboxtheatre.com.
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Anthony Miglieri is a film critic living in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. He can often be observed watching the Bulls or extolling the virtues of Michael Mann's Thief.