Día de fiesta

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.

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.

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.

Jour de Fete (1948)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Tati's remake of his short École des facteurs, L' has him playing a simple and rather dimwitted postman who becomes a laughing stock when a fair comes to town. At the fair a movie is shown saying that the American postal service is the greatest in the world as they never stop and contain the best service when it comes to delivering mail. After seeing this our French postman decides to step up his own game. Perhaps I made a mistake in watching the short film first but I actually thought it was better than this feature version. This remake really only becomes one during the final twenty-minutes when nearly every gag from the short is copied over. I didn't find any of the gags here to work as well and that includes the riding on the back of the truck, the church bell and of course the bike running around on its own. The added gag of Tati accidentally hitting a large pig in the road got a small chuckle but it wasn't hilarious. The first hour of the film kept me entertained but I'd be lying if I say I laughed a lot. For the most part the film, due to Tati's performance, kept a smile on my face but for a comedy I was really hoping to laugh more. I found the biggest problem to be with the supporting characters who don't support Tati very well. There are countless gags that these supporting players set up but they add very little to the joke and again everything has to fall on Tati. The scene where they try to get the pole up in the air was very funny though.

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.