Customer Reviews

Jour De Fete [VHS]

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Tati's first feature, now restored to its original carnival colour, mixes priceless physical comedy with profound vision of a vanished France.

My personal favourite film from Jacques Tati, Jour De Fete is gentle, undemanding and very funny. The story of a village postman in rural France the film has little in the way of plot or dialogue. Jour De Fete may be set in a France that never existed but so what? If you are feeling stressed by the 21st century watch Jour de Fete and see how a good quality of life is better than a high standard of living.

To watch Jaques Tati is to see how crass most modern comedies have become.

Tati's first feature film (he has made some shorts before) from 1949 is about an inept bicycle riding postman (Tati himself, of course) trying to adopt more efficient ways of delivering mail in a quaint French rural village, after watching a documentary of the American postal system. One must say first that the gags here are not as good or as funny as in Tati's later films (especially Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle). Still, this is worth seeing, especially in its color version (Tati was disappointed with its primitive color system, so he finally decided to release the film on black and white; the color version of the film was restored and released to the public many years later, after Tati's death). What is more striking of the movie when one sees it now is to look, even in a color that leaves much to be desired, at a rural France that no longer exists.

After the WW2 , the figure of Jacques tati emerged from the ashes of the pains, traumas and sorrows inherited from the spiritual wounds and diverse sequels from the War.

And truly, this film had to have been eau de cologne, a visual delight not only for the French citizens, but for the rest of the world.

In this debut Jacques Tati tries fervently to emulate the efficacy of the American postal service in a small route. You will realize these attempts are near of the heroism. One of the most human and free spirit films ever made with all the freshness the originality and good taste are capable to do.