M. Hulot's Holiday (1953)

In 1942, Jacques Tati and Henri Marquet were living in occupied France. They left Paris in search of the remotest part of the country they could find, hoping to escape recruitment as workers in Germany. They finally settled on a farm near Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre, located in the dead center of France -- not far from where George Sand had entertained such houseguests as Chopin, Liszt, Flaubert, and Turgenev -- and spent a year or so getting acquainted with the village and its inhabitants. Three years after Germany's surrender, Tati and Marquet returned to the village to make a short film, L'ÉCOLE DES FACTEURS ("The School for Postmen"), in which Tati played François, the village postman, who delivers the mail on a bicycle. (François was based loosely on a bit character played by someone else in a comic short Tati had acted in ten years earlier.) L'ÉCOLE DES FACTEURS was Tati's first directing project, and the following year he and Marquet returned with different cinematographers but the same basic crew to rework and expand the short into a feature, JOUR DE FÊTE, whose brand-new color process, Thomson-Color, would make it the first French feature in color. Marquet entered French film as an assistant director for Tati's L'ÉCOLE DES FACTEURS (1947). He was also an a.d. for Tati's MON ONCLE (1958) and PLAYTIME (1967). His writing credits include Tati's JOUR DE FÊTE (1949) and LES VACANES DE M. HULOT (1953).  Nominated for Writing (Story and Screenplay) 1955: LES VACANCES DE M. HULOT (w. Jacques Tati) 1 nomination