(Part of The Complete Jacques Tati)
Distributor: The Criterion Collection
Release Date: October 28, 2014
MSRP: $124.95
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Film: B+ / Video: B / Audio: B- / Extras: A

Jacques Tati’s first feature is unmistakably the work of the French mime, establishing in its opening shots the theme that would pervade his entire filmmaking career, that of the conflict between an idyllic way of life and the frantic pace of postwar Western consumerism, synonymous with America’s global cultural influence. The film begins with a tractor dragging trailers filled with carnival props through country roads, the fake horses piled in the back contrasted with the real horses still pulling plows in fields or simply galloping away from the sight as if staring their own obsolescence in the face.

Once the tractor reaches its destination in Sainte-Sévèr-sur-Indre, a quaint town located almost at the direct center of France, the film swiftly abandons any driving plot for a tour through the fair that springs up in the square. Nonetheless, the movie does have a centralizing element in the form of François (Tati), the affable but incompetent mailman, who is as ill-suited to helping people set up the carnival as he is to his day job. Attempting to coordinate the raising of a tentpole, François succeeds only in repeatedly smacking himself in the head, either on the pole itself or a nearby rake that he steps on twice.

Compared to the spiritual influence Charlie Chaplin exerted over Tati’s later films, Jour de Fête often foregrounds its (bowler) hat-tips to the filmmaker. François ambles about in oversized shoes, and an old woman who trudges around town discusses visible action in the half-observant, half-narrativizing manner that characterizes Chaplin’s narration in the updated versions of his silents that he released in the 1940s. Even Chaplin’s early use of sound figures into Tati’s comic soundtrack filled with the din of modern life and a few tweaks like an argument between two men over a ladder that edges toward the pipsqueaks Chaplin employed as a politician’s speech in City Lights. Yet however derivative the sensibility may be, Tati is an exceptional comic talent in his own right, and like Chaplin, his gifts extend to performance and aesthetic. Tati even achieves a truly spellbinding special effect that is captivating in its visual simplicity but technical prowess, a sequence of François’s bike riding away without him, steering and pedaling of its own volition as its owner chases fruitlessly behind.

It’s a gentle, dazzling scene, but it also speaks to the film’s anxious opinion of progress. Earlier, the camera watches François over his shoulder as he peeks through a tent hole and watches a newsreel about American mailmen using helicopters to make their deliveries, the shot capturing the nervousness in the man’s face as he contemplates having to do the same. The small-town folk find François to be too slow, but when he attempts to deliver “American style” and pedals faster than even competitive cyclists, he ceases to be “François,” the man everyone knows and good-naturedly ribs, and becomes simply “the mailman,” the vessel for dropping off parcels and letters. François’s speed comes with amusing inefficiencies—he wings a box of new shoes directly on a butcher’s chopping block, inadvertently converting boots into open-toed—but there’s something vaguely melancholic within the final act’s frenzy as François delivers so quickly that people do not even notice him until they find a letter nearby and turn to see him disappearing down the street. Tati would one day envision an entire cityscape to stress the minimized individual, but Jour de Fête does it with nothing more than a mailman’s self-consciousness and a flimsy bicycle.

A/V

Criterion’s disc comes with three different cuts of the film: the original 1949 black-and-white release, a 1964 re-edit containing new scenes and individually colored frames, and the belated 1995 release of the film’s intended full-color version. The 1949 version, naturally, fares best, with excellent contrast throughout and variable texture based on the scene-by-scene conditions of the location shoot. The ‘64 version looks mostly like the ‘49 cut, though the rotoscoped colorations, however thematically employed, look distractingly fake and awkward, lacking the natural color-tinting of some old silents and instead looking like someone laid drawings over the film. Filmed with an experimental color stock from a company that failed before the negative could even be developed, the color version looks paltry, its washed-out browns often resembling early two-strip color photography from the 1920s or early ‘30s more than a feasible Technicolor variant. Sound is stable across the versions, though obviously clearest in the ‘49 version, as much for its deliberately distanced, intricate use of sound effects as the fact that it’s the only version that comes with lossless audio (LPCM mono vs Dolby Digital for the other two cuts).

Extras

Including the two bonus cuts, the disc also contains “In Search of Lost Color,” a 1988 TV documentary about the discovery of the color negative and efforts taken to bring it to theaters, as well as a theatrical trailer that intriguingly pitches the film as an antidote to the spate of contemporary films reliving the war, even if it’s as much about the postwar period as those movies are of the resistance. But the best extra is an 80-minute video essay from Stéphane Goudet that thoroughly covers Jour de Fête, discussing the film’s themes, comparing alternate versions, even tying gags to earlier, more modest renditions in early shorts (and later thematic applications), as well as looking at copious amounts of on-set and cut footage to see how Tati shaped the streamlined comedy. It’s an exceptional, well-sourced feature that ably lays out just how complete Tati’s oeuvre was, making a case on the first disc of Criterion’s box set for the decision to package his entire work into one package.

Overall

The modesty of Jacques Tati’s delightful feature debut belies its ambitions, and a terrific set of extras points the way to where the director would go from here.