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Monsieur Hulot arrives in a Paris rebuilt from glass, steel and gadgets, where the airport, offices and streets look much the same as those of other modern cities. He has come to keep an appointment with an American official, but the building he enters is a maze of cubicles and corridors, and the man he seeks keeps slipping out of reach. At the same time a group of American tourists is being rushed through the city on a tight schedule, among them a young woman who takes an interest in Hulot. Their paths cross repeatedly over the course of a day and night, from an exhibition of new products to an opening-night restaurant where the fittings and the staff come apart in a series of small accidents, until the group gathers again at a drugstore in the early hours.

Jacques Tati directed, co-wrote and stars as Hulot, working with co-writers Jacques Lagrange and Art Buchwald. It is the fourth of the six features he directed, following Mon Oncle and preceding Trafic, and its large sets and intricate staging were costly enough to leave him in serious financial difficulty. The credited cast runs to three dozen performers, including Barbara Dennek as the young tourist and France Rumilly among the small roles.

On IMDb the film holds 7.8 out of 10 from around 29,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.7 from a much smaller sample, while its critics' rating of 9.4 from 55 reviews places it well above both audience scores.