Jour de fête/The Big Day

In Jour de fête, director Jacques Tati stars in his first feature, shot simultaneously in an experimental, obsolete color process and, as a precaution, black and white. Restored to full color in 1995, the film is Tati’s exploration of provincial French cultural traditions against post-WWII modernity, mechanization, and American “progress.” But it is also a highly self-reflexive text about the filmmaking process, daily life, the history of comic style, and the role vision plays in laughter.

(Jacques Tati, 1949, 79min, France, dvd)

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