Der Film

Once a year the sleepy french village of Saint-Severe wakes up when the carinval comes to town. The villagers amuse themselves with the festivities and the postman Francois watches a movie at a travelling show about the modern methods of the American postoffice. He rises to the challenge and wants to prove that he can deliver mail on his bike as fast as his motorised rivals in the USA...

There are not many actors and directors who were able to influence the movie world as much as Jacques Tati, who earned himself a permanent place in the olymp of the comedians right next to Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Tati was, however, not nearly as busy as other filmmakers - he only made five feature-length movies and a handful shorts, but those were enough to make him immortal.

The Birth of a Comedian

It all began in France in the 1930s. Jacques Tatischeff was born on October 9th, 1909 as the son of russian-dutch-italian parents and had enjoyed a childhood in relative wealth with a good school education. His first real job was in his father's company, who was an art restorer and picture frame manufacturer, but in his youth Tati was also very much interested in sports. Tennis, rugby and boxing were among his favourites, which he pursued extensively and while doing so accidentially discovered his comedic talent. Friends, who were watching his hilarious sport pantomimes, suggested that he should take his performances to the stage.

In 1933 Tati appeared for the first time in a professional stage production and from then on practically lived on many varieté stages, cabarets and theaters in and around Paris and even on tour all around France and Italy. When his stage appearances became huge successes he began to get interested in the relatively new medium film, first appearing in 1934 in the movie On Demande un Brute showcasing his athletic talents. Later Gai Dimanche followed and finally in 1936 the short boxing pardy Soigne ton Gauche, which he had produced together with his friend René Clement.

War and Peace

World War II interrupted Jacques Tatis career just as he was on tour in Italy - he was drafted into the army, but he managed to survive the war unscathed. At the beginning of the German occupation of France he fled together with a friend, the writer Henri Marquet, to the unoccupied zone to avoid getting caught and being sent to Germany as a forced labourer. They hid in a farmhouse near the small village of Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre, which they got to know very well during their time there and whose population they learned to liked very much.

After the end of the war, Tati exclusively concentrated on his movie career and first appeared in small, straight roles in Sylvie et le Fantôme and Le Diable au Corps, directed by Claude Autant-Lara - but he really wanted to try the art of slapstick comedy. Fred Orain, who had already produced Tatis first big appearance in Soigne ton Gauche, was so thrilled about his performance that he wanted to make sure his protegé would have a future on the silver screen. Together with Tati he founded the production company Cady Films, which became the home of the two filmmakers for a long time.

Village Stories

When Jacques Tati and Henri Marquet were waiting for the end of the war in Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre, they had collected a lot of ideas for future film projects. They were especially taken with the rural village life, nearly unaffected by modern civilization, deciding that they wanted to immortalize the little town someday in a movie. A further inspiration was brought by Tatis previous short movie Soigne ton Gauche, which began with a fast, bike-riding postman - a character, which Tati had not yet played himself, but now wanted to make his own, devoting a whole short film to him.

Tati and Marquet returned to Sainte-Severe in 1946 with a camera team to shoot their first short film after the war. L'École des Facteurs was the title of the movie, which in a loving and witty way parodied the fight of a little village postman against modernization - exatcly the right subject for the athletic Jacques Tati, who was able to put his skills to good use. The film was made with a surprisingly large effort and some nifty technical tricks, but the picturesque scenery of Saint-Severe was also not neglected. But it had already become clear at this point that L'École des Facteurs was only the precursor to something even bigger.

The Carnival comes to Town

With a successful short movie on their resumé, Jacques Tati, Henri Marquet and Fred Orain managed to get solid financial backing for their next project. L'École des Facteurs had proven to be a huge hit and Jacques Tati was seen as a great hope for the french cinema, which had been in a deep crisis since the end of the war. Even with his stage career interrupted by the war, Tatis reputation was not damaged at all and after his first own short film the expectations were very high.

Tati had in fact planned L'École des Facteurs as a sort of test to gather experience and to find out if shooting in Saint-Severe was really practical. The villagers must have felt like in a carnival when Tati returned to the little town with an even bigger film team in 1947, to make a longer and more elaborate version of his short movie. He finally wanted to put his idea into practice, which he had conceived together with Henri Marquet during their earlier stay in Saint-Severe.

A Postman called Francois

Of course Jacques Tati wanted to work not only as a director, but also as an actor in his new movie and returned to the role he had already played in L'École des Facteurs: the ambitious postman, who now received the proud name of Francois. Originally only a small secondary character in Soigne ton Gauche, Tati was so taken by him that he had played the role himself in L'École des Facteurs and even planned to make him the trademark of his new movie - but without thrusting him completely into the foreground. Francois the postman at first glance seems like an homage to Charlie Chaplins little tramp, but he actually had only superficial similarities to him and other famous slapstick figures.

Tatis inspirations are clearly recognizeable, but nevertheless he had created a totally original role for himself. It is the only really active character of the movie, who is driving the nearly non-existent plot, although he only becomes the main protagonist in the middle of the story. Tati had mainly used local people for his secondary cast when he made L'École des Facteurs, but now he was able to afford professional actors like Guy Decomble and Paul Frankeur for some of the more important roles, but at the same time he was also able to convince many of the villagers of Sainte-Severe to appear in his movie.

Tati, the Observer

Jour de Fête does not have a fully grown plot, a characteristic the movie shares with many of Tatis later works. The storyline is told loosely in a lazy, quiet way, interwoven with many small tales connected with each other, which recount the arrival of the traveling showmen, the setting up of the carnival and its impact on the town life. Tati is watching with his camera like through the eyes of a passer-by, who is sometimes represented by a character in the movie: an old woman wandering through some of the shots, commenting on the happenings in an old-fashioned humerous way.

Tatis humour is much more subtle than most of his slapstick roots, because the jokes are not presented to the audience on a silver platter. Instead they have to be discovered and closely observed to understand them - Jour de Fête is a movie which has to be watched with attention. A real plot only develops in the last half of the movie, when Francois the postman is being encouraged by his American rivals to do his job faster and more efficent. This part of Jour de Fête is essentially a much more elaborate remake of L'École des Facteurs with something that can be called an action finale, filmed with many technical tricks.

The Color Experiment

Before the production of Jour de Fête had begun Jacques Tati had gotten a tempting offer: the film manufacturer Thomson proposed to let Tati shoot his movie as the first colour production in French movie history with their experimental Thomsoncolor process. In the USA and in England color film had been in use for nearly a decade, but because of the war the technology had not made it all the way to France and in the post-war period Technicolor film was still much too expensive for many French filmmakers. It was also hard to get and to use, because the only european lab being able to develop Technicolor film was located in England.

For Jacques Tati it was a fascinating possibility to try an affordable colour system, but at the same time he did not fully trust the new technology and was able to persuade his producer Fred Orain that the additional costs to shoot the movie simultaneously in black-and-white would not be wasted. So during the production of the movie there were always two cameras standing next to each other, one loaded with black-and-white stock and the other with the experimental Thomsoncolor film. Tati accepted that there would be differences between both versions and while some scenes were shot seperately for both cameras, he did not favour one of them and made sure everything was filmed on both film stocks.

Tati went to great lengths to use the possibilities of the colour movie process and designed a simple, but distinct colour scheme, which emphasized the difference between the normal village life and the colourful carnival. But like his sceptical postman Tati was also proven right with his doubts about the modern technology: during the filming it was found out that the developing of the color negative worked, but making a positive print from it was impossible. Tati was very disappointed, but also glad that his movie was not lost thanks to the simultaneously shot black-and-white material.

Tatis World of Sound

While Jacques Tatis movies have sometimes been compared to the great silent comedies of the 1920s, the filmmaker had often experimented with music, sound and voices and always equipped his movies with elaborate and complex soundtracks. As his first feature film, Jour de Fête had not yet evolved very much in that respect, but was very creative nevertheless. The music, composed by Jean Yatove, who had also worked on Soigne ton Gauche and L'École des Facteurs, sounds rather rural, traditional and very French, but there were already some jazzy melodies added in some of the more active scenes.

Apart from the music the soundtrack consisted of a fascinating soundscape, in which the often only barely understandable voices and sounds are mixed deeply into another to form a single unit. Much dialogue can be heard, but it is only recognizable as comprehendable speech when it is essential to the plot. The rest is part of a very natural ambient noise, which perfectly fits to the observing nature of the movie and does not seem intrusive at all.

A Successful Failure

When Jacques Tati had completed the shooting of Jour de Fête in November of 1947, the future of the movie was still uncertain. The unusable colour negative was not the only problem, also the film did not have a distributor yet. Only after many private screenings and a preview in a suburb of Paris Tati was able to find a company willing to release Jour de Fête all over France. After a successful premiere in Paris in May 1949 and very positive responses of the critics, that summer the movie was nominated for the golden lion at the Venice film festival - a high honour, but Tati lost to his fellow countryman Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Despite its problems, Jour de Fête was able to become a huge success and at the end of 1949, the movie was not only shown in France, but also in cinemas all over Europe - even in Germany, where it was released under the somewhat misleading title Das Schützenfest (The Marksmen's Festival - there is no shooting competition in the movie). The audiences had never seen anything like it before and Tatis individual style was justly hailed as a completely new discovery. Even before Tati had started to work on a new movie, his reputation as a brillant director had traveled all around the world.

The three Lives of Jour de Fête

For Jacques Tati the evolution of his first feature film had not finished after 1949. Because he had not been able to find a method to rescue the color version of his movie, he returned to Saint-Severe in 1964 to shoot a few additional scenes, in which a painter travels through the village making colourful drawings of some of the most distinctive scenes. In addition Tati laboriously hand-coloured some parts of the movie to achieve at least some of his originally conceived colour compositions. Also the music, sound and dlalogue were completely, but faithfully recreated with the modern magnetic recording technology, replacing the earlier optical soundtrack.

For over thirty years, this 1964 incarnation of Jour de Fête was the only one shown. It was Jacques Tatis final version, who died in 1982, having no idea that there would be a third version of Jour de Fête someday. In 1988 the french film lab Eurocitel managed to crack the Thomsoncolor process and for the first time there was a real chance of making colour prints of Jour de Fête. Tatis daughter Sophie, who had been born during the making of the movie, took care of getting a decent budget to transform the vision of her father into reality. In 1995 the time had come - the colour version of Jour de Fête was ready. At first it was shown only in France, but soon it spread through arthouse cinemas all over the world and was also broadcast on television in many countries.

It was, however, not simply a colourized version, but a completely different movie. During the restoration effort it was noticed that while Tati had placed both cameras next to each other, he had sometimes shot totally different takes on the colour stock from very different angles. There were also some short sequences on the colour negative which were missing in the black-and-white version. With the help of Jacques Tati's own production records, the movie was completely new assembled and only very few sequences had to be digitally colourized from the black-and-white version, due too much damage on the colour negative. It was not a Technicolor wonder, but the muted and deliberately somewhat pale colours matched the nostalgic atmosphere of the movie perfectly and gave it a completely new life.

Tatis First Masterpiece

Sixty years after its making Jour de Fête has not lost any of its fascination. Jacques Tatis unique view into the microcosm of a small french village and the fight of a postman against the modern methods of his american competition is equally a contemporary document and a classic which has aged very well - especially after the long-lost colour version had been reconstructed almost fifty years after the premiere.

The DVD

For a long time, Jacques Tati's Jour de Fête was very hard to find on DVD. The french DVD, released in 1999, contains both the 1964 version and the later colour reconstruction together with a documentary about the restoration - but this DVD has been out of print for a long time. Other releases like the finnish disc also have both versions of the movie, but are also very hard to get. The british release has only the colour version and for years there have been rumours of an American Criterion disc, but that has never been officially confirmed.

When in 2004 the small swiss label Impuls-Medien had announced four of Jaccques Tatis movies on DVD, the expectations were high - but the bonus materials only consisted of Tatis short films and especially Jour de Fête proved to be a disappointment, because only the colour version was included, using an old video master from the 1990s. Not much later the same DVDs had been released in Germany by Universum Film as a boxset, but Jour de Fête suffered from asynchronous soundtracks - this problem has fortunately been corrected on the single releases which appeared in 2005.

For Tati conoisseurs this DVD of Jour de Fête is only an in-betweeen-solution, because Jacques' Tatis masterpiece debut really deserves much better. In 2012 the British Film Institute, which had already released Jour de Fête before in England, produced a long awaited successor on DVD and even Blu-Ray, containing a much improved transfer and most importantly both versions of the movie. This makes the old Universum release of Jour de Fête completely redundant, except maybe for the German soundtrack.

Bild

This DVD only contains the 1995 restoration of Jour de Fête's colour version. Unfortunately no new transfer of the film source was made and the same old video master has been used, which was the source for all television broadcasts and videotapes for over fifteen years. While the film restoration itself has been successful considering the circumstances, the technical quality of the transfer leaves much to be desired.

The restoration of the colour version can only be described as a small wonder, because it's very remarkable that after nearly fifty years the Thomson-Color process had been finally cracked. Since the system had only been in its infancy, very strong colours were not really possible, but it was enough to register Tatis very deliberate colour compositions, making the contrast between the grey-brown-green village and the more colourful carnival evident. The colours are missing brilliance and look somewhat washed-out, but the result of the restoration is nevertheless amazing. However, a couple of scenes had to be computer-colourized from the black-and-white-version because the colour negative was partly unusable. Compared to the new 2012 hd transfer from BFI this old video master has proven to be much too bright, the many blown-out white image parts were completely avoidable - this old disc is not really a good representation of the colouzr restoration.

A further benefit result of the restoration is the surprisingly low amount of damage and dirt on the source film. Although the image is far from being completely clean, tramlines and scratches are only occasionally visible and some dirt particles are also only very seldom noticeable. The image is reasonably stable, but there is some noticeable telecine wobble - which is not a problem of the restoration, but the transfer of the film source, because it is also visible on the newly produced 1995 introduction.

Another problem related to the age of the transfer, but not the film itself, is the disappointing detail. This DVD does not look like a real film transfer, but like a videotape, consequently looking muddy and blurry, even with some heavy electronic sharpening. Not much more detail has been produced by this, only a heavy line flickering, which is visible in many scenes and quite annoying. Film grain is sometimes visible, but has been largely swallowed by the lack of detail. Brightness and contrast are also not very well balanced, bright parts of the image tend to bloom a lot and many dark scenes look like they were shot in daylight.

This nearly fifteen year old transfer simply does not represent the remarkable restoration of Jour de Fête very well - even the constantly high bitrate cannot change that. As an analogue television broadcast master from the 1990s this might be okay, but even for 2005 the quality is extremely disappointing. The new transfer from 2012 shows how good this old disc could have been.

Ton

In contrast to the image quality, on this DVD the sound of Jour de Fête makes quite a good impression for a movie made in 1947. This is because Jacques Tati had re-dubbed his movie completely in 1964 and this version was also used for the colour restoration, making a remarkably good quality possible on this DVD - unfortunately only for the original French soundtrack. There were fortunately no multichannel-remixes attempted, the original mono version was preserved.

The French track has a surprisingly fresh and lively sound, which is somewhat unusual for a movie of this age. Especially the dynamic and frequency response don't leave much to be desired, the music has a healthy bass and reasonably clear trebles without much distortion or other age-related problems. The ambient noise, which in Jour de Fête includes the voices, sounds quite realistic and is perhaps a little bit too thin, but still integrates well with the music. Crackle, hiss or other distortions are nowhere to be heard - this track sounds quite clean and not aged at all.

Although the German dub was apparently based on the new version from the 1960s and was presumably done for the colour restoration, the tecinical quality is disappointing in comparison with the original French soundtrack. As can be heard in the prologue created in 1995, the German track on this DVD was digitized from an optical track and sounds more muffled and much less brilliant than the French version. The sterile sound of the dubbed voices destroy much of Tatis elaborate sound mix and are not of a very convincing quality.

There are only German subtitles on the disc, which are a reasonably accurate translation of the French soundtrack, but do not represent much of the sometimes deliberately unintelligible original dialogue. The asynchronous soundtrack of the earlier versions of this disc have been corrected in this pressing from 2005, both languages are completely in sync.

Bonusmaterial

There are no documentaries, commentary tracks or other extras on this disc, but one very essential accompaniment has been included: Jacques Tatis short film L'École des Facteurs, the predecessor of Jour de Fête, here in an almost better version than on the Criterion release of Les Vacances de M. Hulot.