Sunday, September 07, 2008

Jour de fête

Lystikäs kirjeenkantaja / Den roliga brevbäraren / Holiday. FR 1949. D+starring Jacques Tati. The digitally restored (1995) Thomsoncolor version, 79 min. With e-subtitles in Finnish by Lena Talvio. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 7 September 2008. - I watched the last reel only of Tati's masterpiece to check out the restoration of the experimental Thomsoncolor. It was pleasant but felt slightly too much duped, the film has the same look as hand-painted silents a hundred years ago, the colour scale is a bit like watercolour, not perfectly matching the outlines, and it even resembles computer-coloured videos. I remember having seen also colour footage from this film with a more pointillistic approach. I prefer the black & white version, but both are great.

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