School for Postmen (1946)/Forza Bastia (1978)/Evening Classes (1967)

I’m not sure why I checked out the disc of Tati shorts over the other two feature films I haven’t seen yet, but I think it might have been because of this short. There are a lot of cute sketches here from the training of the postmen in order to cut 25 minutes off their routes to the delivery of the various letters. It’s interesting to see Tati as a character other than Monsieur Hulot and I’m looking forward to seeing the feature length Jour de Fête.

I also watched two other shorts in the set. Forza Bastia was the only other short directed by Tati. It is entirely just footage of soccer fans before, during, and immediately after a 1978 match that ends in a tie. It had been shelved until 2002 and I’m not sure why anyone felt the need to dig it out. I admit to fastforwarding the footage. The other, Evening Classes, was filmed at the time of Playtime. Directed by one of the assistant directors of that film, this waivers between being a comedic sketch of Tati teaching an acting class and him actually teaching comedic techniques.