Jour de Fête

Like Keaton before him, Tati devised gags of such sheer intricacy as to prove on occasion just too beautiful to be laughed at (it's no accident that the truly funniest talkies - Fields, the Marx Brothers - were hardly directed at all). In this, his first feature, reissued in its original 'splash colour' version (never shown at the time), an almost plotless tale of a village postman's endeavours to streamline his service à l'américaine is enhanced by a radiographic vision of rural minutiae which one might call hyper-realist, were it not for that term's sleek urban connotations. As for Tati the performer, he makes cycling along a tranquil country lane as spellbinding as if it were taking place on a high wire.