CINEMA DE LA PLAGE – The Cinéma de la Plage celebrates Jour de Fête

Today at the Cinéma de la Plage, we’re celebrating Jour de fête! Sixty-six years ago, in 1947, Jacques Tati nearly put his signature on the first colour picture in the history of French cinema. The project didn’t go to plan, but a black and white version did see the light of day and it is this version, newly restored, that you’re invited to discover at the Cinéma de la Plage.

The shooting of the film was greeted enthusiastically in the village of Sainte-Sévère, in the centre of France. That was where Tati set up his camera just after the war to tell the story of the joyous and exuberant arrival of the fair on the occasion of Bastille Day. Along with the showmen comes a travelling cinema with a documentary that will overturn the life of François, the village postman.

Jacques Tati never imagined this film any other way than in colour. He experimented with a new process, Thomson colour, but the film failed to print properly. Luckily, the shoot was backed up by a black and white camera, so the movie was saved.

Even so Tati never gave up the idea of making Jour de Fête as a colour film. In 1964, a revised version of the movie was released. Colour was introduced by using mask painting and a new character was included in the movie to justify the modification: the painter, who acts as the narrator.

Jacques Tati dreamed of a drab monotone village suddenly bursting into colour with the arrival of the fair. Tati’s daughter, movie editor Sophie Tatischeff, decided to pursue her father’s vision and continued to work on the colourisation of the film with chief editor François Ede. Alas, Jacques Tati never saw the result, which was finally released in 1995, twelve years after his death.

Tarik Khaldi

SCREENING
Thursday 16 May / Plage Macé / 9.30pm