Och’s Weekend Movie: Jour De Fête

July 6th, 2007 by ikiro

In Jour de Fête (1949), Jacques Tati plays François, a postman who delivers the mail around a small village in the center of France. We follow François on his delivery round on his pignon fixe while the other townies prepare for some upcoming festivities. In the evening, François watches a film showing how the US postal services ride motorbikes through flaming rings and use helicopters to deliver mail in a highly efficient fashion. Or at least, that is what François has been told. The next morning, he decides to modernize his delivery techniques according to the lessons learned: rapidité, rapidité. What follows is a great lesson in hilarious bike handling skills and an efficient mail delivery procedure that the Apostle of the American Gospel of Efficiency only could have dreamed of. Check out Tativille for more on Jacques Tati, or go see Mon Oncle at the Plaza Futura on July 10.

The obvious link between Jour de Fête and la Grande Boucle is of course the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team (1996-2004), another bunch of American postmen that taught their European colleagues a few cycling lessons with rather impressive results. A bit further back in Tour history, the successes of TI-Raleigh (and later Panasonic) lead by Peter Post come to mind when tagging this Weekendmovie as Het is koers. Most notable success of the Dutch postmen (/Jean) is the 1980 Tour victoire by Joop Zoddemilk which may be considered as an achievement by the whole Raleigh team.

Finally, because I love it when things come together, we can’t go by without paying attention to this hommage to the Red Scare from the East who always has been a trusty postman that never failed to deliver, both in his Panasonic and US Postal service years. Props to Vladimir Karpets for maintaining Samson’s powers.

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