Thing 18 You Tube

At last, something I know about and use. However, I've never posted a video clip to my blog (or to anything else, for that matter).

The YouTube gem I chose is from Jacqus Tati's superlative 1949 film, Jour de Fete, but I selected it for strictly serendipitous reasons. While I was working on Thing 18, a patron walked up and asked for Jacques Tati films. I recognized a fellow enthusiast and began describing Jour de Fete, which I last saw projected against a sheet in a student film venue in Den Haag 30 years ago while I was living in the Netherlands. He'd never heard of it, and we could find no evidence that it had ever been released in an American format DVD. Well, what was YouTube meant for it if not moments like this?

Sure enough, YouTube had three separate clips from the film--although not, alas, the most wonderful scene of all. That would be the "training film" shown to the Tati and his fellow postmen, in order to teach them how to deliver the mail "a l'americaine" using the "methode atomique." Giant mushroom clouds punctuate the latest in postal technology. It sounds horrible from a 21st anti-nuclear p.o.v, but in terms of the film, it was gentle French raillerie at the expense of the American efficiency. The print I saw contained was black & white, but someone had carefully hand colored all the French tricolor flags (the "jour de fete" in question is Bastille Day, after). Purely lovely.