Tati's first feature introduced some of the finest mime and slapstick humor since the heyday of Chaplin and Keaton. Tati plays a village postman who, influenced by an advertising film at a visiting fair, decides he can singlehandedly emulate the streamlined New York Postal Service for his sleepy town. Roy Armes writes in French Cinema: “Jour de Fête mixes comedy of all kinds--gently rustic humor, pure slapstick and satire on the modern craze for speed. Tati was a mime before becoming a filmmaker and this film recalls silent screen comedy in its reliance on visual humor. Tati's music hall training has enabled him to master the essential of all screen comedy: the art of timing his gags. This work is an isolated one in the French production of the forties. It heralded no new school of comedy and four years passed before another film of Tati's appeared, but Jour de Fête was sufficient to mark out its director and star as one of the most original talents in the history of French cinema.”