Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 22: Sunday Jan 22

Jour de Fete (Tati, 1948) & Mr Hulot's Holiday (Tati, 1953): Riverside Studios Cinema, 2.30 & 4.20

Chicago Reader review of Jour de Fete:

'Jacques Tati's first feature (1947), a euphoric comedy set in a sleepy village. As in all of his features, the plot is minimal: during Bastille Day festivities, the local postman (Tati) encounters a newsreel about streamlined postal delivery in America and attempts to clean up his act accordingly. But the exquisite charm of this masterpiece has less to do with individual gags (funny though many of them are) than with Tati's portrait of a highly interactive French village after the war—a view of paradise suffused with affection and poetry.' Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here is the trailer

************************************************************** 

Time Out review of Mr Hulot's Holiday:

'Tati's most consistently enjoyable comedy, a gentle portrait of the clumsy, well-meaning Hulot on vacation in a provincial seaside resort. The quiet, delicately observed slapstick here works with far more hits than misses, although in comparison with, say, Keaton, Tati's cold detachment from his characters seems to result in a decided lack of insight into human behaviour. But at least in contrast to later works like Playtime and Traffic, there's enough dramatic structure to make it more than simply a series of one-off gags.' Geoff Andrew

Here is the trailer