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

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.

This movie will undoubtedly not be what you expect. The cover-art of Tati DVDs paints him as a Chaplinesque 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.