Jacques Tati sidled into the cinema on some of the most brilliantly studied silliness since the heyday of Chaplin and Keaton. He might have invented Monty Python's "Minister of Silly Walks" two decades earlier, with his large feet which remain in one place while the rest of his giraffe-like body moves forward, backward and sideways. In Jour de fête, he is the bumbling, mumbling village postman who, influenced by an advertising film at a visiting fair, decides to emulate singlehandedly the streamlined American postal service for his sleepy town, his ancient bicycle substituting for the Americans' helicopters and airplanes. Only in part a satire on the American-influenced craze for speed and efficiency (Mon Oncle and Traffic would elaborate on this theme), Jour de fête, a village portrait, plays havoc with the genre of French films that convey rustic provincial life with a mixture of hearty realism and subtle nostalgia. Cynically, Tati sets up, then confounds, any romantic expectations we might have, either of the genre or the narrative. And the director has his surrogates: a bent old lady who observes and comments wryly on the proceedings, and a young artist who silently sketches the whole quaint scene. Tati's humor is largely visual (he was a mime before becoming a filmmaker); his predilection for long shots allows us to enjoy his perfectly timed gags as they careen through the landscape. He was also, from this first film, a master of the subtleties of film sound. We may never see our postman hero in close-up, but we always know when he's coming by the roar of a pesky wasp that continuously plagues him.