Whether he was scuttling about the village or seaside, or gently satirising modern architecture and the impersonal clunk of automated machines, Jacques Tati always took circuitous routes but more often than not ended up right in the heart of his viewers. His films provided the inspiration for such worrying works as David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, but though they always express a certain disquiet – as the relentless world rushes forth leaving man struggling to retain his balance, never mind catch up – here there’s nothing much to fret. These are some of the funniest funnies, if you’re patient enough to laugh.
Before he became every Frenchman’s favourite uncle, Tati was the rural postman in Jour de fête. The title is commonly translated as The Big Day, but it could just as well be Day of the Fair, or The Feteful Day, if you wanted a pun, because the first half of the film concerns the pulling together of the annual festival. The flag pole must be erected in the town square, while François, Tati’s postman, proves himself adept at stepping on rakes and scurrying from bees, comic classics which the actor-cum-director perfects.
When a film is shown during the festival depicting the brave new innovations of the American mail, the locals take to teasing their fastidious postman, and soon François is devising all sorts of curious methods in order to make his route more efficient. He clutches onto the back of a lorry, and rather than delivering letters hand-to-hand, tucks the mail ‘American-style’ under the tail of a horse. Swinging his satchel becomes his symbol of liberty, and his bicycle poises itself expertly as it sails sans-rider around a bend, before François finds himself at the head of a peloton, eventually meeting the water face-to-face.
Just look how the little boy chases and skips after the carousel horses at the beginning of the movie. This is expectation, this is grace. Today a youngster of the same age would be more likely to spit or urinate on the passing truck, or we’d be shown the boy tumbling down the hill in a pointed comment on strife and fate. And just look how the same boy chases and skips after the carousel horses at the end of the movie, all the same even as the festivities dissipate. Forget ‘rapidité’: ups or downs, it’s all about rhythm.
