Jour de Fête
Directed by Jacques Tati
At Lincoln Center on January 4th & 6th
No film artist has scrutinized environments with the same mesmerizing clairvoyance of Jacques Tati. A slapstick observer fixated on the minutiae of human behavior, his movies jibe like living portraiture. The comic bafflement created by civilized discontents of technology and commercialism provide the underlying themes in all his productions, whether in the subtle ways of Mon Oncle or the grand scale metropolitan expressions of Play Time.
Unlike Chaplin, Tati doesn’t tell stories to justify his glorified presentations of setting and motion (you’ll find nary a close-up in his lean oeuvre). Instead, he strips down movement to its basic charm with choreographic precision. Aptly enough, the French director’s exploratory 1949 debut, Jour de Fête, screens this the weekend at Lincoln Center as part of its annual Dance on Camera Festival. Significantly trimmer at 79 minutes and more linear than his later works, it nonetheless illustrates the remarkable seeds of his invention.
Following a daft postal worker (Tati, naturally) through the French countryside on a series of delivery misfires and humorous encounters, Jour de Fête reveals Tati’s creative process. The deliveryman provides the sole consistent element, but there’s no singular quest; in fact, you might consider the plot as a series of anti-quests, with amusing episodes involving the scatter-brained protagonist’s newfound inspiration from an American documentary on the postal service and his sudden disorientation after inadvertently getting drunk.
Briefly resurrected in 1995 using the color version that never made it to theaters during the initial release, Jour de Fête shouldn’t be excluded from the canonization of Tati’s career. Though aesthetically tame compared to his later achievements, it remains enticing as a study of rhythmic interactions. People and objects are treated equally as props with endless potential. The role of the bicycle in several gags anticipates The Triplets of Belleville, as does Tati’s championing of background sound over dialogue.
The originality of its design makes Tati’s cinema unfold as it were a series of Looney Tunes episodes envisioned by Robert Altman. His ideas are sketched out in the narrative tapestry of Jour de Fête, which will be accompanied at Lincoln Center by Tati’s preliminary short, “L’École des Facteurs,” an outline of an outline containing several sequences that wound up in his feature-length debut. Together, they illustrate how Tati’s process remains deeply felt as the preeminent example of thought as action. The concept makes talkies seem crude.
Directed by Jacques Tati
At Lincoln Center on January 4th & 6th
No film artist has scrutinized environments with the same mesmerizing clairvoyance of Jacques Tati. A slapstick observer fixated on the minutiae of human behavior, his movies jibe like living portraiture. The comic bafflement created by civilized discontents of technology and commercialism provide the underlying themes in all his productions, whether in the subtle ways of Mon Oncle or the grand scale metropolitan expressions of Play Time.
Unlike Chaplin, Tati doesn’t tell stories to justify his glorified presentations of setting and motion (you’ll find nary a close-up in his lean oeuvre). Instead, he strips down movement to its basic charm with choreographic precision. Aptly enough, the French director’s exploratory 1949 debut, Jour de Fête, screens this the weekend at Lincoln Center as part of its annual Dance on Camera Festival. Significantly trimmer at 79 minutes and more linear than his later works, it nonetheless illustrates the remarkable seeds of his invention.
Following a daft postal worker (Tati, naturally) through the French countryside on a series of delivery misfires and humorous encounters, Jour de Fête reveals Tati’s creative process. The deliveryman provides the sole consistent element, but there’s no singular quest; in fact, you might consider the plot as a series of anti-quests, with amusing episodes involving the scatter-brained protagonist’s newfound inspiration from an American documentary on the postal service and his sudden disorientation after inadvertently getting drunk.
Briefly resurrected in 1995 using the color version that never made it to theaters during the initial release, Jour de Fête shouldn’t be excluded from the canonization of Tati’s career. Though aesthetically tame compared to his later achievements, it remains enticing as a study of rhythmic interactions. People and objects are treated equally as props with endless potential. The role of the bicycle in several gags anticipates The Triplets of Belleville, as does Tati’s championing of background sound over dialogue.
The originality of its design makes Tati’s cinema unfold as it were a series of Looney Tunes episodes envisioned by Robert Altman. His ideas are sketched out in the narrative tapestry of Jour de Fête, which will be accompanied at Lincoln Center by Tati’s preliminary short, “L’École des Facteurs,” an outline of an outline containing several sequences that wound up in his feature-length debut. Together, they illustrate how Tati’s process remains deeply felt as the preeminent example of thought as action. The concept makes talkies seem crude.
