Critics reviews

After the show is over, two little kids come onstage, stumble about, play with balloons, try to juggle, and then blow into horns—at which point the orchestra is heard on the soundtrack, and Tati watches them from the audience. What makes this sequence so incredibly moving is that Tati created a scene that transcends the mechanized horrors of Playtime and the mishaps of Traffic. Only in the play of the youngest children... is the conflict between understanding and misunderstanding transcended.

Tati was the first major filmmaker to shoot a feature in video, and he brought to this challenge the same sort of innovative craft that he brought to the movie — although the technical options available in video in 1973 were far from what they are today.