Jour de Fête (1949)

First Jacques Tati feature film. The film concerns a festival in a small town and the colorful postman (Tati) who serves it.

Originally shot in both color and black and white, with the black and white to be used if something happened to the untried color film. As fate would have it the film remained only viewable in black and white until recently because no lab would attempt to process the color film stock. Recently the color negative was processed and edited together by Tati's daughter. The result is a film that looks like a slightly faded color postcard from days gone by. I mention this because the film feel like an old snap shot of days gone by.

The film is an okay film. Its funny and charming and very rough around the edges as befits a first feature. Its not a terrible film by an means but its not a great film. The film at times in fits and starts and there often seems to be long build ups to jokes that misfire, while some seeming throw away gags bring big laughs. Its a problem that plagued several of Tati's other films to a lesser extent, but here seems a bit more rampant because there doesn't seem to be the same rigid control Tati had in the Hulot comedies. Speaking of the Hulot films this film appears to have been raided if not for gags but for a certain visual style. I think every later film save Play Time has echoes in this one.

I like this film, but I don't love it. Its not a film that I'm going to be putting on again any time soon. Yes I will watch it again, particularly once the memory of my recent marathon viewing of the Huolt films fades.

If you're a Tati fan I'd give it a try. If you've never seen a Tati film you could try it but be warned better films followed this one.

5 out of 10

Fmovies: The color version is certainly a revelation and much to be preferred to the murky black-and-white sub-titled print I saw on original theatrical release. Actually sub-titles are not really necessary at all. Even born-and-bred Parisians would have difficulty penetrating the heavy provincial accents of the villagers. Furthermore, much of the dialogue is deliberately mumbled, slurred or made indecipherable by background noise. The only stretch of speech that is clearly heard is the narration of the tent movie and its information could easily be picked up by simply watching the visuals. Even an ability to understand the old lady (she is supposed to be a native but has an incongruous Parisian accent) who acts as a narrator to tie the various segments together is not at all important.

So what we actually have here is pure pantomime that is given added realism by being filtered through an aural surround. Tati is the perfect clown who makes the most of a succession of clever gags that are superbly timed and all the more enjoyable because of their insight into the mores and customs of the little village. In fact as a revelation of village life with all its atmosphere, its interplay, its horseplay, its petty quarrels, its come-and-go tensions, the movie is second to none.

The support characters too have a wonderful part to play in the action, whether professional players like Frankeur, Beauvais and Decomble or simple villagers like Vallée and Wirtz who never made another movie in their lives.

The beautiful music score lends further enchantment to the pastel colors of Tati's immaculately chosen locations.

All told, a little masterpiece and a fitting herald to Tati's best and most celebrated movie, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953).

«Jour de fête» is a very funny movie about François (played by Jacques Tati himself), the local postman who want to be as fast as the postmen in America. The camera work is excellent so is the cinematography. Very joyful movie too. The music score is great and it's a good way to show «l'ambiance de fête» that lives in the village.

I really enjoyed that movie. The only little drawback, and it's not really one, it's the regional french dialect used in this movie. I'm french-speaking and even I had some difficulty to understand some of Tati's lines.

8 out of 10.

Jour de Fête fmovies. This first, non-Hulot comedy feature by France's Tati, who derives from the silent greats and can keep company with them too, centers on his gangly bicycling postman Francois, mingling with the many and varied denizens of a tiny, ancient French village. When the carnival comes to town, a tent cinema shows a movie of the hilariously high-tech, high-speed, muscleman American postmen, the insecure Francois first gets very drunk and then is seized with the urge to do his job very, very fast. Gentle, sharp-eyed, teeming with life, this isn't even regarded as one of his best, but after trying for years this screening finally brought me around to LOVING Tati. For one thing it's a love letter to bicycles, a sure sell for the surprisingly large Bike Week audience that came out to Cinecycle for this screening. For another thing there are more articulated personalities in this movie than there are in any dozen current releases; EVERYONE is acutely drawn, from the woman in the high window to the recurring character of the buzzing bug. It's a goddam tapestry of humanity, and as a result it's positively moving as well as laugh-out-loud funny. It's also very cinematic in spite of its antiquity, most obviously in some out-of-nowhere colorization, but also in compositions that pay off in a much less rigidly controlled way than any comparable American comedy - the good stuff is often happening in the corner of the frame, like a good Mad comic with a halo.

When I first saw this film I was amazed by its simplicity but also surprised by its competence. Its a cheerful and really funny piece of a great French actor and director, with some fine and really original scenes in it. This comic masterpiece about a day in a picturesque little French village, in which the postman Francois is being followed, on his daily tour, when a carnival is taking place. The speed of the modern way of life is brilliantly compared by the typical easy calm French way. Francois symbolizes this old way by doing everything slow and wrong on and off his bicycle. The little but creative stunts are really figured out for that time and are inspired by Buster Keaton and have a little touch of Chaplin in them.

The uniqueness of the film is that the story is creating itself. As the day follows we get to know the village and it's inhabitants and we are also learn a small lesson by a little old lady with a goat.

Surely a must see!

When I first saw this film I couldn't get it out of my head, and put it in my all time top ten. The magic has faded a little, but this remains a classic for its strange mixture of gentle slapstick, sight gags and verbal jokes, and its beautifully atmospheric portrait of French rural life.