Playtime ($39.95 DVD) At once Jacques Tati's triumph and his downfall, 1967's Playtime is the supreme statement of his art, and the movie whose financial failure bankrupted him and nearly ended his career. It's easy to get swept up in the tales of excess that dominate the supplements on Criterion's two-disc set: the massive sets, a miniature city the press dubbed "Tativille"; the film's budget, which swelled to five times the initial estimates over the course of a two-year shoot; and above all Tati's fanatical perfectionism, which led to an entire sequence being reshot because he was unhappy with the hue of a blinking red light. But perfectionism is only a vice if it's misplaced — not, as here, in the service of true perfection.

Over the course of his three previous features, Tati had grown increasingly disillusioned with the modern world. By Mon Oncle, in 1958, the sleepy village of Jour de fête, Tati's first feature, had been replaced by an absurd nightmare of metallic surfaces and rebellious devices, like the automatic garage door that traps its proud owners in a sepulchral carport. By Playtime, the convivial badinage of friendly neighbors has been supplanted by the incessant babble of tourists — which, in the movie's placeless metropolis, includes just about everyone.

Although Tati's beloved M. Hulot can be glimpsed among Playtime's swarms, the slicker-clad silhouette as often belongs to an impostor. Tati had grown bored with his famous creation, and determined to democratize his art — or, as he put it, "defend the people." Rejecting the forced perspective of close-ups, Tati used lenses approximating the eye's depth of field. More importantly, he filmed in the costly 70mm format, whose high resolution essentially allowed every spot on the screen to be seen in equal detail.

The effect, for those who've seen the movie in its original format, is like having the scales ripped from your eyes. An office building's facade gleams with lysergic brilliance, a vision at once implacable and awe-inspiring. Crowds register as groups of individuals, not just faceless masses. Although Playtime duplicates the alienation of the post-industrial city, Tati never lets the little people go out of focus.

On video, of course, it's a different story. I'd like to see the people who claim their eight-foot screens look better than theatrical movies put their high-def projectors up against Playtime's otherworldly clarity. (Of course, they'd have to travel, since there are no 70mm projectors in the Philadelphia area.) Criterion's new transfer, which restores several minutes to the movie's running time, is equal to their best, and yet I'm struck by favorite moments that don't hit with the same force, like the distant mannequins in the movie's opening scene that are almost imperceptibly revealed to be living beings.

It's the presence of such minor touches that prevents Playtime from replicating the dehumanization it decries. In the end, Tati celebrates the triumph of individual imagination over the mechanized world: A carillon blares as cars circle a roundabout, and streetlights wink on like artificial stars. Perhaps imagination, too, can bridge the gap between Playtime as it ought to be seen, and Playtime as almost everyone will see it.

Replacing Criterion's out-of-print single disc, Playtime joins a host of Criterion re-ups, including an anamorphic Brazil, a spruced-up Amarcord, and a massively expanded Seven Samurai, which splits the movie over two discs and adds more than three hours of documentaries and special features.

(sam@citypaper.net)