O Criterion, where art thou? Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Playtime have all been given the treatment, but this little gem is left out in the cold. And it has such an interesting history, I can already envision the two-disc package: first disc is the original color version of the film (done in "Thomson-color," a process that was done in before the actual film was shown), disc two the black and white (with hand-drawn colorized touches by Tati himself). Both would have commentary from a biographer, film history expert, or scholar of slapstick physical comedy, documentaries about Tati’s early career and impact, and silent film shorts as well as modern day examples to draw parallels and place this kind of comedic brilliance in historical perspective.

I don’t know, I’d buy it. Instead, we have some jankety Australian version that won’t even play in my DVD player. Or, my downloaded copy of the black and white version that didn’t even have subtitles.

Because, like I said, this is a gem. My "fluent" French only sometimes extends to movie French from the 1940’s, so the fact that I didn’t have subtitles should have been a problem, right? Well, the dialogue’s not really the point here. In short, a bumbling postman arrives in a small town on the day of a big fair, gets wasted and watches a movie about how efficient the USPS is (how times have changed), and the next day decides to turn his postal route into a mini-Tour de France, spurred on by constant shouts of "Rapidité à l’americain!!!" Hijinx, in the truest physical sense of the word, ensue.

So, like with any movie of this stripe, it succeeds or fails on the strength of its slapstick set pieces. And there were more than enough marvelous ones here. Stamping his postal forms on the back of a moving truck. Trying to get a bike in gear with its front wheel twisted parallel to the handlebars. Learning efficient (à l’americain) mounts and dismounts on the merry-go-round. Getting "calls" from the "borrowed" phone resting on the front of his bike. Boots delivered unceremoniously onto a butcher’s block, just as he is chopping a cut of meat, and the confusion that ensues. The list goes on.

In a strange comparison, during the Depression, Frank Capra made movies to inspire - the little (often gee-shucks bumpkin) guy, in the face of adversity, takes on the big interests and the bad world, and ends up rich, powerful and with a good-looking girl to boot. This movie does something similar, though with a subtlety completely foreign to Capra, and with a French ambiguity (the little guy doesn't really come out on top in the end). But in the malaise of post-War France, there is vibrancy, lightheartedness, general conviviality, and the marvel of small-town French life: all of which suggests that in even the direst situation, there is humor in our follies. And the greatest part is that this movie does all of that without giving off even the slightest hint of the pompous jack-crap I just wrote in this paragraph.

In short, I could watch this one over and over and I don’t think I’d get tired of it any time soon.