Jour de fête + The School for Postmen

Jour de fête
(Holiday / The Big Day)
France 1949. Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati, Guy Decomble, Paul Frankeur, Santa Relli, Maine Vallée

Restored Colour Version! ► “A masterpiece by one of the key figures in the history of cinema” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader), French comic master Jacques Tati’s charming debut feature remains a favourite of many, and serves as a wonderful primer on the pet methods and preoccupations of the Tati universe: the fascination with tradition at odds with modernity and technology; the flair for visual gags, aural design, and intricate comic sequences; the minimal, almost non-existent spoken dialogue. Tati plays François, a gangly, gawky village postman — and a clear prototype for M. Hulot, Tati’s most famous creation. When François sees a short film about the modern, ultra-efficient American postal system, he sets out to streamline his own old-fashioned operations — with hilarious results. Jour de fête was originally shot in an unperfected French colour process, only to then be released in black-and-white; the original colour version was rescued and restored in 1990s, after Tati’s death. “Here we have the true descendant of the silent movie comedians . . . What also emerges is [Tati’s] brilliant use of space — the tiny incident at the corner of the screen — an ability to create characters in a few revealing shots, and his slightly sentimental view of the old French values” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 79 mins.

The School for Postmen
(L’école des facteurs)
France 1947. Director: Jacques Tati
Cast: Jacques Tati, Paul Demange

Tati had made some tentative forays into filmmaking in the 1930s, but this popular comic short — a trial-run for Jour de fête, his first feature, two years later — was his solo directorial debut. The actor-director plays a gangly village postman caught up in the local postmaster’s efforts to streamline service. “There is not a visually dull moment” (David Bellos). “Genius . . . Its minimalist perfection was expanded into the full-blown perfection of Jour de fête” (Gilbert Adair). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 14 mins.