Jacques Tati gave his feature-length goodbye to his memorable cinematic alter-ego, Monsieur Hulot, in this iconic portrayal of life in modern Paris.

Gone is the sleepy seaside simplicity of his first Hulot movie, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. Gone too is the juxtaposition of old and new Paris, seen in his masterpiece, Mon Oncle.

Instead, Playtime presents us with a Paris totally constructed of chrome and steel, mirrors and escalators, office buildings which merge seamlessly into airports. This 1967 movie is as modern as today -- this is how we live.

The only constant from the earlier movies to this is the character of Hulot, who strides (pipe jutting forward, body leaning into what seems an ever-present wind impeding his progress) towards an appointment he seems fated never to arrive at. He gets entangled with a gaggle of American tourists -- the merged paths seem fated never to unravel.

It would be a shame to watch this final Hulot movie if you haven't seen Tati's first feature film, from 1949, Jour de Fete (The Big Day), set in an eternally-sleeping rural village where the village postman Francois is thrown into American-style time-and-motion-study improvement.

At the core of this village's Big Day is the erection of the traditional Maypole, similar to a carousel, except it is the people themselves, grasping the ropes, who revolve.

And at the close of Playtime, the centre of Tati's Paris has become a giant, exuberantly coloured carousel. But instead of people, this carousel is made up of joyously revolving buses, cars and trucks.

As a window-cleaner inclines a window, a bus rises and falls as if it's a carousel carriage. And the passengers scream with delight.

Tati continues to build this analogy until the close of the movie. It's as if he's saying that despite modernity, despite the omnipresent glass, steel and chrome, the old Paris cannot be subdued. It's still Playtime. It's a wonderfully optimistic note on which Tati bids farewell to Monsieur Hulot, truly one of the great comic creations in all of cinema.

The transfer is something of a puzzle.

There are various versions of Playtime in the marketplace. The film was shot originally on 70mm, and I believe that version is held by Tati's family in France and hasn't been released for transfer. The full French running time was 155 minutes.

The British Film Institute has just brough out an edition, apparently from a fine 35mm print, in the correct original ratio of 1.85:1. It runs for 125 minutes.

This version seems to have been somewhat trimmed, to around 1.66:1 or perhaps 2.35:1, which is the ratio of the now-deleted Region One Criterion release -- a release which had the same 119-minute running time as the Australian release.

Aspect ratio aside, the image is clean and sharp and cannot be faulted in any way.

The two-channel stereo sound is sharp and precise. I suppose one day a new transfer may become available, from the original 70mm source. When (if) that happens, perhaps the original six-channel sound will be restored too.

The key extra feature on this disc is a wonderful short movie, Cours du Soir (Evening Classes), made two years after Playtime and representing Monsieur Hulot's absolute swan-song.

This short feature presents us with the wonderful conceit of Hulot taking an evening-class in how to effectively mime such things as a fly-fisherman, or a man walking into a door, or stumbling over a step, or playing tennis -- all the little details which built up the Hulot character.

Of course none of the students can quite match Hulot. But who could?

The final extras are original trailers for Playtime, Mon Oncle and Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.