Jour de fête (1947), Tati's first film, newly restored in color, is a mild apprentice work for his later near-masterpieces. It's a whimsical tale about a one-day fair in the town square of a small French village. A carnival roustabout, Roger (Guy Decobie), flirts with a local gal whenever his wife turns her head. The town postman, François (Tati), delivers the mail by bicycle.

There's no story at all, just lots of comme ci comme ça visual gags. Tati is pretty funny when, dead drunk, he tries to mount his bicycle from the other side of a fence. He gets funnier when, emulating American mailmen he encounters in a chauvinist US documentary (they deliver letters by dropping from a helicopter), he decides that speed is everything. He races his bicycle, frenzied American-style, until he learns the lesson that slow and French is A-okay. Tati's pre-Monsieur Hulot persona is Charles De Gaulle on wheels, as a lanky, likable country rube.