Play Time
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| Poster Origin : | France |
| Poster Size : | French Petite / 40 x 60cm |
| Poster Size : | French Affiche / 60 x 80cm |
| Poster Size : | French Grande / 120 x 160cm |
| Poster Artist : | René Ferracci |
| Poster Year : | 1967 |
| Poster Version : | First Release |
| Poster Printer: | Saint-Martin, Paris, FR |
| Film Origin : | France |
| Film Director : | Jacques Tati |
| Film Year : | 1967 |
‘Un film de Jacques Tati’ said everything needed to sell tickets, and this really was his film in every sense; from its monumentally ambitious vision to the sad financial backlash.
This poster conveys many aspects of Play Time in graphical form. There are no central characters so the poster has no credits; Tati said that the only real star was his set, and this takes precedent. ‘Tativille’ was an enormous construction of city streets, high-rise buildings, offices, an airport terminal and a traffic circle, endless corridors, escalators, elevators and work stations; a futuristic Paris of straight lines, modernist glass and steel, and cold, artificial furnishings. Tati wanted the film to be shot in colour but look like black and white, and the scenes predominantly feature greys and sterile blues. The comedy provided by the mysterious characters though, is vividly, endlessly colourful. With a cast of hundreds of anonymous extras this film is about ‘everybody’ (even Monsieur Hulot is incidental); tiny humans wander in and out of the monochrome architecture, Bruegel-like in their barely discernible details, just as they do in this design.
The artwork is signed ‘Baudin’ and produced by the studio of René Ferracci, but the scribbled wireframe construction is actually a rough blueprint of Tati’s, used while envisioning his set. Such is the breadth of Tati’s creative preeminence, even this artwork is partially his.