Jour De Fête
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Jour de fête'' (''The Big Day'') is a 1949 French
comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor. These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have a happy ending, with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy is one of the o ...
starring
Jacques Tati Jacques Tati (; born Jacques Tatischeff, ; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, filmmaker, actor and screenwriter. In an ''Entertainment Weekly'' poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted 46th (a list of the top 50 was ...
in his feature film directorial debut as an inept and easily distracted mailman in a backward French village. Shot largely in and around
Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre (, literally ''Sainte-Sévère on Indre'') is a commune in the Indre department in central France. It is situated near the source of the river Indre. The town was featured in the movie '' Jour de fête'' (1949) by Ja ...
, where Tati had lived during the Occupation, most of the actors were unknown and villagers served as extras.


Plot

On a public holiday, a young boy watches a travelling fair arrive in his village of
Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre (, literally ''Sainte-Sévère on Indre'') is a commune in the Indre department in central France. It is situated near the source of the river Indre. The town was featured in the movie '' Jour de fête'' (1949) by Ja ...
. Among the locals is François, the amiable and bumbling mailman, whom everybody likes but nobody takes seriously. Marcel and Roger, the two men running the fair, make him their butt and get him drunk. In the cinema tent, people watch a spoof documentary that contrasts the unbelievable efficiency of the US post office with the antiquated French post office. They decide that François must get up to date and, although he only has a bicycle, must start using transatlantic dash in his delivery. In the end, exhausted by his frantic efforts, he stops to help a family pitchfork their new-mown hay into a horse-drawn cart, while the boy from the opening scene completes the deliveries on François's route.


Cast

*
Jacques Tati Jacques Tati (; born Jacques Tatischeff, ; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, filmmaker, actor and screenwriter. In an ''Entertainment Weekly'' poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted 46th (a list of the top 50 was ...
as François * Paul Frankeur as Marcel * Guy Decomble as Roger


Themes

In ''Jour de fête'', several characteristics of Tati's work appear for the first time in a full-length film. Largely a visual comedy in the silent tradition, dialogue is used at times to tell part of the story and an ancient woman with a goat appears sybil-like on occasions as a commentator. Music is mostly diegetic, coming from the carousel, the village brass band, and the pianola in the bar. Sound effects are a vital element, with imaginative use of voices and other background noises, particularly of birds, to provide both ambiance and humor. Giving a sympathetic portrayal of what was already a vanishing way of life, where the villagers do not yet have cars or tractors and water comes from the pump, the film introduces what would be a key theme of Tati's films. Instead of rounded individuals rooted in communities, changes in Western society were turning people into operators of technology and consumers of its products. Though much of this trend originated in the US, France was catching up fast. Critics have noted how Tati turns the human body, with its inbuilt limitations, into a form of machine that performs tasks. A hidden factor in this and following films is that the old world of rural France is shown as one of curves, in space and in time, with people and their livestock following fluid relaxed routines, while the new world modelled on the USA operates on straight lines in rigid timeframes, symbolised by François literally cutting corners to speed up his round.


Production

The movie was originally filmed in both black-and-white and Thomsoncolor, an early and untried color film process. In using both formats, Tati feared that Thomsoncolor might not be practical, a well-founded concern when the firm proved unable to complete the processing. A colour version has subsequently been released, with a prologue detailing the failure of the original colour recording and asserting that the new version is in accordance with the director's intentions. This version is in fact the work of Sophie Tatischeff, editor and daughter of Jacques Tati, and François Ede, cinematographer, who meticulously edited and restored the film from the original camera negative which had been preserved and stored away for years. The optical system device that allowed the restitution of the colors was restored and allowed, more than forty years after the shooting, to produce the original colors of the film.


Release


Theatrical

Over 7 million tickets for ''Jour de fête'' had been sold in French cinemas up to 2015, making it one of the top 40 most popular French films of all time.


Critical reception

On
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on , with a weighted average rating of 8.3/10.


Home release

There are three versions of the movie available: * The original version from 1949, running at 87 minutes. This version is completely black and white. * The re-edited version by Tati from 1964, running at 80 minutes. This mostly black and white version inserts some extra footage of a painter and some colorized imagery, while removing some other scenes. * The restored version from 1995 in color, running at 77 minutes. This version, restored by Tati's daughter, is an attempt to finish the original Thomsoncolor version. For parts where that was deemed impossible, colorized frames were used instead.


References


External links

*
DVDBeaver comparison between black&white and colour DVD versions of the film''Jacques Tati: Things Fall Together''
an essay by David Cairns at the
Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jour de Fete 1949 films 1949 comedy films French comedy films Cycling films Films directed by Jacques Tati French black-and-white films 1940s French-language films 1940s French films French-language comedy films