Better Late Then Never

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Early Tati. Comedy not as natural as in his later masterpieces. Simple satire on American business methods - speed, speed, speed! But Tati (as Francois the rural postman with the swinging satchel) isn't the loner/outsider that M. Hulot became. In fact, here Francois becomes the village idiot at times and not really funny at all. Still, a nostalgic delight. I watched a tinted/colourised version which gave the picture a washed-out look.

If you were forced to discard one piece of the soundtrack from Jour de fête, it would be an easy choice to toss the dialogue. For Tati, each physical gag was an opportunity for aural emphasis and embellishment, and each sound had the potential to be a punchline. His works have roots from the worlds of vaudeville and pantomime, and retain a little of the silent film masters - the technical virtuosity and timing of Keaton, the bumbling everyman of Lloyd, the attitude of Chaplin. But Tati's mastery of slapstick would not be complete without his sound design, and through it he finds a way to magnify the farce of the everyday. Take for example his performance in René Clément's Soigne ton gauche, where he plays the slacker Roger, pushed into filling in as an impromptu sparring partner. The boxer makes a big show of flexing his muscles, causing his jacket to burst at the seams and unzip with an aural flourish. Naturally, Tati follows suit, but his sorely lacking build instead causes his buttons to come undone with irregular and staggered pops. The sound is not merely what we should hear, but part of the punchline itself and how it pokes fun at the character's stature. The introduction of Francois the postman would not be complete without sound, as he rides into the village unceremoniously and is promptly assaulted by a bee, visible only in the buzzing of the soundtrack. The shot, like most of Tati's, is pulled back, and tracks his character around the bend as the bee switches visual planes and begins to annoy a farm observing from above on a hill, and he too begins to wave and flap his arms like a madman and circle around an invisible foe. Another delightful sound gag occurs as Francois takes it upon himself to assist the villagers mounting a flagpole for the annual festival, and in the midst of his elaborate gestures and instructions backs his head into the pole. The blow is soft, so Tati utilises a 'doink' that makes a curious suggestion about the contents of his brain, and Francois is only momentarily stunned. In the next moment, he steps back onto a rake, invoking a classic and causing it to flip up and hit him on the head, but instead of a different sound effect from what we expect is a harder blow, Tati reuses the same 'doink'. The joke isn't on his clumsiness or lack of spatial awareness, but rather a jab at the thickness of his skull and its ability to take punishment. The gag also demonstrates Tati's knack for subverting an audience's expectations and twisting a humorous situation into something else - look at how Francois enters the village, on collision course for the teetering flagpole, before smoothly maneuvering his bicycle, ducking under and turning straight into the open door of the local cafe. By acknowledging the predictability of his gags he could extend them into something much funnier; he flips the joke around by having Francois place a chair into the gap to prevent a fall, only to pull it away a moment later and deliver the punchline. Even as we can see it coming we laugh because the the comedic timing is impeccable, and the situation unavoidable. Tati's puppet-like command of Francois' gangly limbs is skillful, and the way he entangles himself into every possible predicament on his pathway is all the more impressive because of the impossible precision and coincidence required (he slides along a package and times it perfectly with the swing of the butcher's knife). Sometimes the payoffs are longer, and merge seamlessly with other jokes. The cross-eyed man wins Francois a prize, and then later as he drunkenly takes aim, he is ever so slightly veered off course by a disparaging remark, and shatters a window display instead with a trajectory the former would be proud of. The film itself was shot in both black and white and Thomson-color, but the latter was never processed and only restorations can reveal a little of Tati's original vision. That version is ironically tattered and spotty compared to the crisp B&W, the proposed bright, popping and saturated hues now bleary and faded. The simple effects earmark the film as one of Tati's least formally invention visions; in simulating darkness he sidesteps day-for-night photography and instead employs a murky blue filter, and pipes in a track of cicadas. Tati had been an adept comic performer for years before he hit the big screen, finely tuning his grasp of physical comedy and taking on the odd acting job. His first short, School for Postmen, was a handful of gags stitched together involving Francois, and plays like an undercranked version of the longer film. Starting with this feature he began to imbue his work with a sense of thematic absurdity, and surround his characters with larger societal forces, exaggerated for comic effect. Francois is a harmless figure who thinks himself larger than life, until he views American propaganda and realises he isn't all that, and is momentarily struck by the meaninglessness of his work. The American postmen seem like chiselled Apollos, veritable Supermen without fear, and the fact that Francois doesn't exactly fit the bill won't deter him, and pumping his legs furiously, he attempts his route 'American-style', and gets into a whole lot more trouble. In his later films Tati's art direction and set design became stylised to the point of being caricature, as symbolic props seeking to expose the sleek sterility and superficiality of modern living. But here he paints the village with affection and nostalgia, and acknowledges every farmer, butcher and small business-owner as the content characters they are, still untouched by the grips of capitalist modernity. They would never fall to the brand of existentialism that plagues Francois, who for all his effortless lack of coordination and vigour, is relegated to hay duty by a skipping little boy.

Personally, I think Tati's films are hilarious; but they're not to all tastes. Some have told me that they loathe his work. I've never figured out why, but I think it's because the character that Tati usually plays himself is so totally dead pan, so unaffected by the events around him (which he is usually causing) that many miss the more subtle comic bits happening that effectively generate his environment.At any rate, Tati's main shtick - or at least his best known - is to take a pretentiously upright petite bourgeoisie with 19th century sensibilities and drop him into 20th century France where he must confront a society that is largely defined by the gradual eroding of those sensibilities. He usually has serious difficulties with little things like record players or radios. He's a hazard in a car, but the world's no safer when he rides a bicycle. But through it all, he never loses his aplomb, which is derived from his inner recognition that the nineteenth century was more interesting than the 20th overall.In this film, the 20th Century is best (or worst) represented by the recurring presence of Americans. Around the time of the release of this film, the French began to worry that the American, who had liberated them from the Germans, might never go away - a worry that remains influential in French politics to this day, and with some justification. Certainly Tati's postman, on his humble bicycle, appears to be no match at all for the Americans in their motor vehicles - except that his innocent buffoonery somehow manages to get the best of them every time.That give's the film a slight satirical edge, and one which leaves a real impression. Otherwise, we still have the imperturbable Tati, whom "neither rain nor snow nor sleet" - whatever.Enjoyable and wholly entertaining.

The color version is certainly a revelation and much to be preferred to the murky black-and-white sub-titled print I saw on original theatrical release. Actually sub-titles are not really necessary at all. Even born-and-bred Parisians would have difficulty penetrating the heavy provincial accents of the villagers. Furthermore, much of the dialogue is deliberately mumbled, slurred or made indecipherable by background noise. The only stretch of speech that is clearly heard is the narration of the tent movie and its information could easily be picked up by simply watching the visuals. Even an ability to understand the old lady (she is supposed to be a native but has an incongruous Parisian accent) who acts as a narrator to tie the various segments together is not at all important.So what we actually have here is pure pantomime that is given added realism by being filtered through an aural surround. Tati is the perfect clown who makes the most of a succession of clever gags that are superbly timed and all the more enjoyable because of their insight into the mores and customs of the little village. In fact as a revelation of village life with all its atmosphere, its interplay, its horseplay, its petty quarrels, its come-and-go tensions, the movie is second to none.The support characters too have a wonderful part to play in the action, whether professional players like Frankeur, Beauvais and Decomble or simple villagers like Vallée and Wirtz who never made another movie in their lives.The beautiful music score lends further enchantment to the pastel colors of Tati's immaculately chosen locations.All told, a little masterpiece and a fitting herald to Tati's best and most celebrated movie, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953).