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Jour de fête (1949)

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23 comments in total

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
silent film lives on, 15 September 2001

Author: tomquick from illinois

A wholly enjoyable film, in which dialogue is incidental to the visual effect. I preferred black and white over colorized, and the French version over the slightly edited US version (with subtitles and the addition of an annoying artist who participates in colorizing). The real joy is watching Tati. Underneath all the great gags stirs the soul of the postman: officious, determined, mulelike. All expressed without words by a mustachioed rail of a man poised delicately on a bicycle. I was glad to see in the credits that La Poste had sponsored the restoration of the film. A French national treasure.

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A masterpiece of quiet humour, 27 May 2001

Author: John Waterworth from London, England

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.

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
How lively!, 2 July 2000
Author: Julien (Cescotto) from Neupré, Belgium

At a small village fair, the postman François is watching a documentary movie on American postmen: they use helicopters, airplanes and parachutes to deliver mail, for a rapidity question. Rapidity, haste: that's what's in François's mind now. He wants to deliver mail as faster as he can into the small communities he crosses everyday…

This film has surely got an easy-going atmosphere; the gags succeed and are never totally alike. The mosquito each time comes back when you don't expect it. François riding his bike always finds something different to get you laughing! If you are French, then you'll understand villagers' peasant accent, and you won't miss to giggle! Some gags may remember you Charles Chaplin's ones, except that Jacques Tati used speech and colors, but dialogs almost escape notice, and colors aren't shocking.

I recommend this one to Chaplin's fans and other film-lovers.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A feast for the eye, 10 February 2000
Author: steve-667 from Amsterdam

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!

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent movie!, 8 July 1999

Author: José Alexandre de Sousa Fernandes (esposende@hotmail.com) from Braga, Portugal

I didn´t know Jacques Tati until very recently, when a friend of mine lent me the movie. I was surprised when I saw it. Jacques´s performance is nothing short of amazing, and it´s very well directed, too, because (I think) it was shot with one camera only (two, in fact, one in black and white and one in color). The American postman portrait in the movie is excellent, and the way François, the postman reacts to it is very humorous. Also, I must point out the hilarious scene in which François is drunk at night riding is bicycle. I strongly reccomend this movie.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Enjoyable and wholly entertaining., 12 May 2007

Author: (winner55) from United States

Personally, I think Tati's films are hilarious; but they're not to all tastes. Some have told me that they loathe his work. I've never figured out why, but I think it's because the character that Tati usually plays himself is so totally dead pan, so unaffected by the events around him (which he is usually causing) that many miss the more subtle comic bits happening that effectively generate his environment.

At any rate, Tati's main shtick - or at least his best known - is to take a pretentiously upright petite bourgeoisie with 19th century sensibilities and drop him into 20th century France where he must confront a society that is largely defined by the gradual eroding of those sensibilities. He usually has serious difficulties with little things like record players or radios. He's a hazard in a car, but the world's no safer when he rides a bicycle. But through it all, he never loses his aplomb, which is derived from his inner recognition that the nineteenth century was more interesting than the 20th overall.

In this film, the 20th Century is best (or worst) represented by the recurring presence of Americans. Around the time of the release of this film, the French began to worry that the American, who had liberated them from the Germans, might never go away - a worry that remains influential in French politics to this day, and with some justification. Certainly Tati's postman, on his humble bicycle, appears to be no match at all for the Americans in their motor vehicles - except that his innocent buffoonery somehow manages to get the best of them every time.

That give's the film a slight satirical edge, and one which leaves a real impression. Otherwise, we still have the imperturbable Tati, whom "neither rain nor snow nor sleet" - whatever.

Enjoyable and wholly entertaining.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Tati vs America; SLIGHT SPOILERS, 1 October 2001

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Jacques Tati proves more than any other filmmaker that comedy is

just as much an art form as drama. This was his first feature

length film, and while it's not quite up to the level of his three

masterpieces, M. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Playtime

(although the first time I saw each of them, I said the same thing),

it's as delightful as almost any other film ever made. Tati is not yet

M. Hulot, but Francois, a postman who rides through his small

hometown delivering mail on his bike. As the film opens, the town

is preparing its Bastille Day festivities (apparently; I don't think they

ever say "Bastille Day," but it's pretty obvious). The jokes are not

quite on the same level as those other three; they are a bit more

slight, though there were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments (the

cross-eyed guy has two hilarious scenes).

Around 2/3 of the film is spent during the celebration; Tati builds a

delightful atmosphere that will be recall memories of these types

of small town fairs if you youself have taken place in them. Like his

other films, the plot is very tenuous. Tati is much more interested

in the people around him.

Near the end of the fair, Francois sees a newsreel that shows how

high tech American postmen are. They are trained to fly

helicopters, the film tells us, and do so to deliver the mail. Some

have their own airplanes. To train, they race motorcycles through

obstacle courses, jumping over fire and such. Francois is

depressed by the lack of adventure and supreme efficiency in his

own work; through the night, people tease him about being tiny

compared to the American postmen.

The next morning, Francois devises different ways to make his

route go faster. A lot of these scenes are repeated from his short

Ecole de facteurs, which is included on the Criterion DVD of Mon

Oncle (this film has been out on VHS before; I've heard that

Criterion also restored Jour de fete but have no plans to release it

yet, which is depressing and, well, confusing).

The end is as beautiful as the marvelous endings of his three

masterpieces. "Fin" in a Tati film is always a sad event. I can't think

of any other filmmaker whose films I desire to watch over and over

again; I've seen M. Hulot's Holiday three times in the month and a

half since I bought it. There were tears in my eyes when "Fin"

appeared. 9/10.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Hilarious, 9 April 2001
Author: LeRoyMarko from Toronto, Canada

«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.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The bicycle as ideal transport, 2 January 2003

Author: calculo from Belgium

You see the upcoming problems of traffic in this little village just after the war, I guess somewhere in Normandy where the bicycle of François the postman can drive from village to village. Some cars were driven really dangerously because nobody was conscious of the danger of accidents and some people drove to fast through the villages where everybody still lived on the street: the dogs as well as the chickens as the gooses as the elder people. When François gets drunk he enters the local café and stands in two seconds at the window of the first floor! The movie is full of gags that are inspired by Buster Keaton but absolutely original. The people he has to deliver the letters, peasants and habitants of the village shout at him: "A l'Americaine" which means fast and efficient but one of them also comments that he just should deliver the letters and that this is already quite an accomplishment. And yes, in Belgium postmen are now checked on maximum 9 seconds for delivering a letter. There also calculations to make another tariff for delivering letters in places far away. Jacques Tati is unsurpassed as a French comic and he has a very special place in history of French cinema not to be compared with anyone else.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
An Introduction to Tati, 16 June 2007

Author: Ben_Cheshire from Oz

This movie will undoubtedly not be what you expect. The cover-art of Tati DVDs paints him as a Chaplin-esquire figure, but he's much gentler than Charlie. Charlie was energetic. You'll enjoy Tati's films if you expect a gentle trip to a beautiful little village. Throughout the film you observe more than get really involved. Tati always keeps you at a distance, like a stranger.

I liked Mon Oncle the best first run through, but by that stage it was the fourth of Tati's major four pictures I'd seen, so that must have coloured my impression. The most famous is Les Vacances de M. Hulot, and M. Hulot is Tati's famous character, who appears in Mon Oncle, Les Vacances and Playtime. He doesn't appear in Jour de Fete, which was Tati's first first feature-length.

Tati is the Antonioni of slapstick comedy. There's plenty to look at in his movies, as long as you stop waiting for a narrative. None of them have real stories. They do progress, but its more the visual motifs of the various townspeople that develop throughout.

Of the four I'd say Playtime is the least friendly to first-timers.

All copies of Jour de Fete since 1995 feature the imperfect colour process it was filmed with. Its not colourised, that's just the best colour method that Tati had at his disposal in 1949 in France. Even after restoration it suffers from over-brightening and unevenness in colour, and the overall impression is of a bad colourisation, so just be ready for that, and remember this colour version wasn't available until 1995, before that there was no colour, and I think the colour's an important part of the experience of Tati's fete.

I'd recommend you rent/borrow before buying any Tati, so you know what you're getting. Probably youtube won't be the best place: any small segment of his films won't make sense on its own, they're quite slow-paced, and the characters and scenes are meant to accumulate, not be excerpted.

Happy hunting.

Ben

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