Two years ago, the British Film Institute had released a newly restored edition of Jacques Tati’s Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot and this fall the Tati rereleases are continuing with Jour de Fête. The BFI has transferred both the 1995 colour reconstruction and the partly hand-coloured 1964 black-and-white version of Tati’s debut masterpiece in high definition, and while there was no extensive digital restoration, the improvement over the previous DVDs is huge. Jour de Fête has now been re-released as a dual format edition containing both a DVD and a Blu-Ray of both versions, but the Extras – three of Tati’s short films – are only available on the DVD. Nevertheless this is easily the best release of Jour de Fête so far. Today’s review is of course only about the DVD from the set, but most of also corresponds to the Blu-Ray.
(Note for readers outside of Europe: the Blu-Ray is locked to Region B and the DVD to Region 2.)

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