Benoît, a man living a dull and isolated life after his wife and daughter's departure, receives a jolt of energy from Agathe, the new postmistress. His daily life is now punctuated by a boring job and mysterious letters. Against all odds, Benoît ends up getting attached to the new arrival in town and asks for her help. But what's the point? Film from the CNA archive.
Benoît, a man living a dull and isolated life after his wife and daughter's departure, receives a jolt of energy from Agathe, the new postmistress. His daily life is now punctuated by a boring job and mysterious letters. Against all odds, Benoît ends up getting attached to the new arrival in town and asks for her help. But what's the point? Film from the CNA archive.
Jour de Fête tells the story of an inept and easily-distracted French mailman who frequently interrupts his duties to converse with the local inhabitants, as well as inspect the traveling fair that has come to his small community. Influenced by too much wine and a newsreel account of rapid transportation methods used by the United States postal system, he goes to hilarious lengths to speed the delivery of mail while aboard his bicycle.
A bedridden and gravely ill man believes his wife and doctor are conspiring to kill him, and outlines his suspicions in a letter.
An aging woman and her nurse develop a friendship that inspires her to unearth unacknowledged longing, and thus help her make peace with her past.
Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for an upper-class French family, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.
A man on the verge of a promotion takes a mysterious hallucinogenic drug that begins to tear down his reality and expose his life for what it really is.
Jacques Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail.
An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assassination.
Marianne Winckler relocates to the port city of Caen in order to pass herself off as a member of a large community of itinerant workers desperate to make ends meet. She gains employment as a cleaner on a ferry travelling between Ouistreham and Portsmouth, recording the drudgery of the work she and her colleagues are required to do.
One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.
An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.